


this absurd fraction

by dygonilly



Series: fated [1]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Pining, Polyamory, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, alternate title: Xu Minghao vs The World, everything is okay in the end, miley was right it really is about The Climb, side soonhan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:34:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24100675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dygonilly/pseuds/dygonilly
Summary: Where Seokmin and Mingyu's red string ties them to Minghao, who doesn't believe in fate or soulmates.
Relationships: Kim Mingyu/Lee Seokmin | DK/Xu Ming Hao | The8
Series: fated [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1796101
Comments: 54
Kudos: 410
Collections: Seventeen Rare Pair Fest: Round 1





	this absurd fraction

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [SVTRarePairFest](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SVTRarePairFest) collection. 



> I have really treasured this story. I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> [the playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5ecgyD5RC4CF8dnj3JSOVE?si=4chIXm8ASbCooAt2pvnBTQ)

* * *

_you being in love  
_ _will tell who softly asks in love,  
_ _am i separated from your body smile brain hands merely  
_ _to become the jumping puppets of a dream? oh i mean:  
_ _entirely having in my careful how  
_ _careful arms created this at length  
_ _inexcusable, this inexplicable pleasure-you go from several  
_ _persons: believe me that strangers arrive  
_ _when i have kissed you into a memory  
_ _slowly, oh seriously  
_ _-that since and if you disappear  
_ _solemnly  
_ _myselves  
_ _ask “life, the question how do i drink dream smile  
_ _and how do i prefer this face to another and  
_ _why do i weep eat sleep-what does the whole intend”  
_ _they wonder. oh and they cry “to be, being, that i am alive  
_ _this absurd fraction in its lowest terms  
_ _with everything cancelled  
_ _but shadows  
_ _-what does it all come down to? love? Love  
_ _if you like and i like,for the reason that i  
_ _hate people and lean out of this window is love,love  
_ _and the reason that i laugh and breathe is oh love and the reason  
_ _that i do not fall into this street is love.”_

**\- e. e. cummings**  
  
  


* * *

**FEBRUARY**

* * *

The lights in the apartment blink out before Minghao can find which drawer the matches are in. Seokmin shrieks from the other room and Mingyu laughs, cascading and sweet. 

“Shit, that scared me,” Seokmin says.

“Everything scares you,” says Mingyu. “Here, just open your eyes really wide and it’ll let more light in, then you’ll be able to see again.”

“Really?” There’s a pause. “Wait, were you joking?”

“Of course I was!” Mingyu can hardly speak through his laughter. “Ah, you’re so gullible, Seokminnie.”

“You can’t be mean to me, it’s my birthday,” Seokmin whines, voice muffled like he’s pressed his face into Mingyu’s chest, or Mingyu pulled his head in and held him there. Probably the latter. 

“Not yet! I still get a few minutes.”

Minghao finally finds the matches and gets to work lighting the candles on the cake. He was planning on buying one from the bakery down the road, but he came home from class after lunch to find his kitchen and roommate covered in flour and sugar; the apartment smelled like strawberries and Mingyu had whipped cream on his cheekbone. Minghao wiped it away with his thumb, but he washed it off in the sink instead of pressing it against his tongue like he wanted to.

“He’s going to love it,” he said once they had finished decorating the cake with extra cream and fruit. 

Mingyu stole a strawberry off the top, took a bite, and fed the rest to Minghao. “I know,” he said. His voice was confident but the pink of his cheeks gave him away, and Minghao pressed their shoulders together like a confession while they washed and dried the dishes.

Seokmin acts surprised when Minghao reappears with the cake, and for once in his life does not sing along as Minghao and Mingyu attempt to harmonise through their giggles. Mingyu holds the last note as Minghao kneels in front of Seokmin and holds the cake up like an offering. “Happy birthday, Seokmin-ah,” he says. 

“Happy birthday!” echoes Mingyu, a little breathlessly, and Seokmin blows out the candles. 

The apartment dips back into a muted blue darkness, and Minghao hears Mingyu suck in a breath through his teeth. 

Seokmin still has his eyes closed, shoulders tense and hands curled into fists atop his knees. He’s been waiting for his twenty-first birthday ever since the day Minghao met him. 

It was the first conversation they ever had, and it says a lot about Seokmin’s character that his idea of small talk with a stranger was about his burning desire to find his soulmate.

“To have someone like that,” he had said with faraway eyes, “Just knowing that they’re out there makes me feel less lonely, y’know? I can’t wait to meet them.”

Minghao had been young and even more blunt than he is now. He scoffed. “You believe in all that?”

Seokmin looked so wounded by the idea it almost made Minghao take back his words. “Of course I do,” he said hesitantly. “Don’t you?”

Minghao shook his head. It’s not that he’s a pessimist, he just chooses not to believe in an outdated notion that makes people feel incomplete for the first twenty years of their life and trapped or obligated for the rest. 

Minghao hates the way it makes him feel like the anomaly when it’s not even that uncommon to never meet your soulmate. Things happen. Not everyone makes it to their twenty-first birthday. Not everyone believes in it enough to follow whatever feeling supposedly draws you to your ‘person’. 

He was always betting on the statistics being in his favour, that he might find someone and fall in love with them in his own time, on his own terms. 

And he did. 

It just so happens that they’re both obsessed with finding their soulmate, and if they do, then Minghao will fade into the background so quickly it’ll be like he was never there to begin with.

So when five minutes pass and Seokmin still hasn’t opened his eyes, hasn’t started singing love songs about someone he’s never met, Minghao takes a selfish breath of relief.

“Oh, well,” Seokmin says, voice wobbling dangerously, “Guess not.” 

Mingyu frowns and tips their heads together. “It’s okay, Seokmin-ah.” He looks at Minghao with desperate eyes, silently urging him to say something, but Minghao doesn’t want to lie to Seokmin, so he moves up onto the couch and drapes his chest across his back to hug him from behind.

They stay like that in a tangled pile on the couch until the electricity comes back on. Mingyu quietly wipes the tear tracks on Seokmin’s cheeks with his thumbs, and Minghao kisses his temple feather-light, and they feed him cake and smear whipped cream on his nose and cheekbones and chin until he starts laughing again.

Seokmin sleeps over at their apartment because it’s too late to get public transport and too expensive to get a taxi, much to Mingyu’s excitement. They all share Minghao’s bed because it’s the biggest and, despite his feeble protests, Seokmin ends up between them under the covers with Mingyu at his back and Minghao sharing his pillow and his steady breaths. 

“Thank you,” Seokmin says after a while. “This was a good birthday.”

“Of course,” Mingyu says, voice already thick with sleep. His arm tightens around Seokmin’s waist to pull them closer together and Minghao covers the hand Seokmin has atop the blankets with his own, rubbing his thumb along the soft skin of his knuckles. Seokmin hooks their index fingers together.

“Love you guys,” he says quietly, and Mingyu mumbles something like _me too_ , and it’s really nothing new, but Minghao burns with it all the same.

He doesn’t believe in fate, but he believes in this. 

He just wishes it was enough for them too.

* * *

**MAY**

* * *

For years, Minghao thought that loving someone meant you would do anything to make them smile, even at the cost of your own wellbeing. 

He had grown up watching his mother cry through a crack in her bedroom door, but never in front of him. It taught him that you needed to be strong for your family, that you needed to protect them, and nobody had set off such a feeling of bone-deep _need_ to make another person happy until he met Seokmin. 

They were only young, but Minghao watched Seokmin cry over a ladybird falling from his fingertip and decided there and then that he would do anything in his power to keep this boy smiling and happy for as long and often as he could.

The years passed. The loving built like bricks, everytime Minghao threw himself between Seokmin and the rest of the world, and for years he was riddled with bullets, until Seokmin finally pulled him close and said, 

“You don’t need to protect me so much. I know I’m sensitive, but I can look after myself too.”

“I know you can,” Minghao said, but he didn’t know how else to love another boy without tearing his heart out and offering it, still wet and dripping. Like, _here, have this piece of me, and I will learn how to live without it, for you. Keep it and think of me so I don’t have to think of myself._

Minghao still lives too often with his fists clenched, but Seokmin is good at unfolding his fingers like flower-petals and holding him steady, and Minghao, if nothing else, is good at holding back.

With Mingyu, it’s different. 

It’s the same love, still flooded with smiles and sentences that run on for too long, an ineffable excitement for the smallest things, but where Seokmin stands still or caves inwards, Mingyu expands. 

Minghao has had so many arguments with him over the years they’ve known each other that he could never quite tell you what they were ever about. 

Most of the time they are simply a result of the sharper edges of their personalities sparking together like flint. 

There have only been a few that mattered enough to leave a scar, all lined up along the skin of Minghao’s chest like tally marks: the time Minghao found Mingyu’s boyfriend cheating on him and thought that telling him was better than keeping it a secret; when Minghao felt so homesick he thought it would eat him alive, and he told Mingyu that he wasn’t family enough to make a difference, even when he didn’t mean it at all; when they were their closest to being stuck without an apartment and they waded through two weeks of sharp words and slamming doors, yet still refused to consider not finding a place together. 

For years, his sense of security was built on the knowledge that if Minghao reached out, Mingyu would reach back, every time. 

Maybe he still would, if Minghao asked. 

But it will never feel the same—not when Minghao knows in his heart that he is no longer the first choice for either of them. 

He can still hold their hands. He can smile for them, with them, because of them, but Minghao can never be the centre of a universe that he doesn’t believe in. 

It’s a self-imposed exile—like flying to the moon just to watch the earth and the sun dance around each other—but it’s the part that hurts the most. 

* * *

**FEBRUARY**

* * *

Gentle knocking on the bathroom door rouses Minghao from the half-sleep he’d fallen into in the hot water and rose-scented bubbles. 

“Come in,” he calls.

Mingyu pokes his head in first, slowly, like he’s giving Minghao a chance to cover up. Minghao does a half-assed job of collecting the bubbles drifting around his body like icebergs and then makes an ‘okay’ sign with his thumb and index finger. Mingyu grins and shuffles into the bathroom, closing the door behind himself and sitting on the bathmat, back against the wall by the foot of the bath. 

Minghao doesn’t always let him come in when he does this—they spend so much time together already, he needs time alone like he needs to breathe—but he’s found himself saying yes to everything Mingyu asks him this week. He tries not to dig too deep into it, but the burning is very shallow; it’s never too difficult to reach. 

When they were looking for apartments two years ago, Minghao didn’t have a lot of rules or requirements except for one thing: he wanted a good bath. It was a reasonable request, as far as requests go, but it made finding an apartment that they could both agree on extremely difficult. After the eighth unsuccessful application, Minghao conceded, said it wasn’t worth the energy, and he was halfway to accepting a life without bi-weekly bubble baths when Mingyu dug his heels in.

“No, we need a bath,” he said.

“You don’t even like baths,” said Minghao, exasperated and worn out from being pushed back so consistently for the past month. “It’s not worth all this trouble.” 

“Will it make you happy?” asked Mingyu. 

“Yes.”

“Then it’s worth it.” 

They were eating cheap takeout on the living room floor; it was totally unremarkable; Minghao still remembers the moment in perfect clarity. 

“Long day?” asks Mingyu, legs pulled up to his chest, arms crossed over his knees. Minghao hums his assent, head tipped back on the lip of the bath. He’s going to fall asleep again if he doesn’t concentrate. They lapse into silence. Normally this would make Minghao inch closer to sleep, but Mingyu as a person is anything but quiet—forever shuffling and shifting and muttering to himself as he works—so the silence is more concerning than comforting. 

“Myungho?” Mingyu sounds tentative, and when Minghao cracks open an eye to look at him, he’s making himself look small, arms and legs folded awkwardly together like it’ll make a difference. 

Minghao gets his arms on the outer edges of the bath and sits up. “What’s wrong?” he asks sharply.

“Nothing’s wrong—”

“You’re lying.”

Mingyu laughs through his nose. “Will you let me speak?”

“Sorry.” Minghao sinks back into the bubbles, chin grazing the water. Mingyu’s mouth is taut with frustration.

“Do you think Seokmin will be okay? He seemed pretty upset last week after, you know…”

Minghao’s stomach drops. He keeps his face neutral despite the hammering of his heart being hard enough to cause ripples in the bathwater. He’s good at lying. With his words, his face. There’s a shake in his fingers that gives him away, sometimes, but nobody looks at his hands unless they’re expecting it. 

“Myungho?” Mingyu frowns and scrubs both hands through his hair. It’s getting so long— hazelnut syrup dripping into his eyes. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked. I know you don’t like all the string stuff but I’m just… I’m worried about him.”

“Come here,” Minghao says softly, and Mingyu unfolds himself to come closer. He rests his forearms on the porcelain edge with his chin on top, humming when Minghao presses a water-warm fingertip to the crease between his brows. 

They’re very close and Minghao is very naked, but that isn’t the reason Minghao’s heart kicks back into overdrive. 

Nudity isn’t much between them—not anymore. It’s not good for Minghao’s imagination to see so much of Mingyu’s honey skin on a near-daily basis, but it’s moments like this that steal his breath more than anything. Moments when Minghao lets himself imagine the distance between them doesn’t exist, when he can see so clearly how it could be, if only he was brave enough—if only Mingyu wasn’t so clearly looking through him to see his future with someone else. Someone that the universe has already chosen. 

In the grand scheme of things, the whims of Minghao’s heart can hardly stack up against the will of predestiny, no matter how much energy he puts into believing it doesn’t exist.

Because in the end, it doesn’t matter what he believes. He’s only one third of the equation.

It doesn’t stop his head running away with the idea that Seokmin might find someone—he could present any day now—but perhaps Mingyu won’t, and then Minghao will still get to have this. He can’t imagine not having this. But he also can’t truly imagine having one and not the other. It’s selfish. 

Perhaps the universe tearing them both away will be its way of showing Minghao what happens when he doesn’t bend to its will like everybody else.

“What are you thinking about?” Mingyu asks. Minghao traces his finger down Mingyu’s nose before bringing it back to the water with a soft splash. 

“Nothing, Mingyu-yah,” he lies. “And you don’t need to worry about Seokmin. He’ll be fine. Nothing has changed.” 

_Nothing has to change_ , he told the mirror the morning after Seokmin’s birthday, while the others were still fast asleep in his bed. _You will still be important to him if he finds someone else_ , _it’s okay. It’s okay._

“You’re only saying that because you don’t believe in soulmates,” Mingyu says cheekily, poking Minghao’s soapy shoulder. 

“It takes some people years after they turn twenty-one to present. It’s been three days. Lee Seokmin has never been on time to anything in his life, why would he start now?”

Mingyu collapses into a fit of breathy giggles against the side of the bath and Minghao is tired down to his bones—tired of lying to his best friends and to himself—but he smiles for Mingyu, and it’s worth it for the smile he gets back. It always is.

* * *

**NOVEMBER**

* * *

Minghao doesn’t know how long he’s been in here, staring at the same crack in the tiles above the end of the bath, but he can feel his skin starting to wrinkle and the sunlight pushing through the slats in the blinds is angled left instead of straight across. 

Seokmin and Mingyu left the apartment before he woke up this morning, as they did yesterday. He didn’t ask them to give him space. In fact, he hasn’t seen or spoken to them in two days, leaving only read receipts and extra dishes in the sink as proof he’s even home at all. 

Even though he’s the one ignoring them, Minghao sort of wishes they’d push back more, force themselves into his space so that he’d have no choice but to confront them and the situation. But they’re bigger people than he is and Minghao has always been terrible at asking for help when he needs it most, so here he is, taking a bath in a quiet apartment, his only company the knowledge that he has a soulmate connection with his two best friends and still doesn’t believe that it’s real. 

He groans and sinks low enough that his ears are underwater. His body feels like it’s housing a hornet’s nest and he has a pulsing headache that only seems to be getting worse with time. He doesn’t know how to make it all stop. He just wants it to stop. 

Somebody knocks on the front door and Minghao sits up like a shot, sloshing cold water out the sides of the bathtub. The front door opens slowly, but the voice that calls out his name is not one he was hoping for. 

Jeonghan appears in the doorway of the bathroom, still wearing his winter coat. “Hey, Myungho-yah.”

Minghao sinks back into the water, shivering a little. “Hi.”

“Long time, no see!” Jeonghan sits on the lid of the toilet with a rustle from his ankle-length coat. 

“You saw me two days ago,” Minghao mumbles. 

Jeonghan grins sideways. “How could I possibly forget! Seokmin called earlier,” he says, keeping his voice light, “He was all worked up, says you haven’t spoken a word to them since the morning of your birthday. What’s that about, hm?”

It usually takes far more than that to make Minghao fold into himself, but it’s been the most confusing and emotionally difficult three days of his life, and his muscles ache too much to hold up the heavy front of nonchalance. Jeonghan is at his side the moment the first tear hits the bathwater, holding the hand Minghao has resting along the lip of the bath.

“It’s so stupid,” he chokes out, tears flowing faster and faster like an avalanche. The hornets start flying in all different directions. It hurts everywhere. His right Mark looks warped under the water and he wishes it would just melt off, that he could blink and it would be gone and everything would be normal again.

“Oh Myungho, it’s not stupid,” Jeongahn says, “Not if it matters to you.”

Mingyu’s words from all those months ago hang like a ghost between them and Minghao suddenly hates this bath and all that it represents, and cries even harder for it. Jeonghan holds his hand until he runs out of tears, then he finds a clean washcloth and gently rubs Minghao’s cheeks. 

“I know it’s not something you want to hear right now,” he says, uncharacteristically hesitant, “but the exhaustion is only going to get worse if you don’t spend enough time around the others. The first few days are important for the bond.” 

Minghao hates that it makes sense. His face twists and Jeonghan mirrors the expression.

“Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s all fake and society is a curse, blah blah blah,” he says, hands still gentle on Minghao’s jawline despite the edge to his voice. “But your health is more important than your pride. Don’t be stupid.”

“I think I preferred when you were crying over me,” Minghao grumbles.

“Next time I do that will be at your funeral.” Jeonghan sighs and sits back on his heels. “Just... consider that whatever you’re feeling, Mingyu and Seokmin are too. You’re not hurting alone. You never are.”

“I know.”

“Of course you do, because you’re smart and empathetic and wonderful.”

Minghao squirms.

“Agree with me,” Jeonghan says threateningly.

“Is that a spoon? Where the hell did that come from?”

“I keep one in my coat pocket, just in case. Now tell me you’re going to make an effort and talk to Mingyu and Seokmin, or I won’t leave.”

Minghao sighs. “I will.”

“Good. Those boys need more reassurance than Soonyoung, and that’s saying something. Whenever I ignore him he immediately jumps to the conclusion that I hate him, even though we’re Fated _and_ objectively perfect as a couple. It’s exhausting.”

“I don’t hate them,” Minghao says, frowning. 

“I’m not the one who needs to hear that.” Jeonghan combs his fingers through Minghao’s hair and presses a kiss to the crown of his head. “It will be okay. And if it’s not, you’re welcome at my place anytime.” He frowns. “Well. Maybe not _any_ time. I love you, but if you come knocking on my door at ass o’clock again I’ll commit a crime.”

“You wouldn’t last in prison,” Minghao says, flicking the face towel at him.

“I know. That’s why Soonyoung would take the fall for it.”

“Does _he_ know that?”

Jeonghan grins as he fixes his hair in the mirror. “The constant threat of danger is what keeps our relationship alive.” Once he’s satisfied with the shape of his bangs he looks back at Minghao. His expression is serious, his voice soft. “It’s not just about you anymore, Myungho-yah. And for what it’s worth… I don’t think it ever really was.” 

* * *

**MARCH**

* * *

The apartment is dark save for the lamp they leave on beside the television, and the three of them tumble through the door, uncoordinated and giggling. 

“Myungho is druuuunk,” sings Seokmin.

“I’m not!” Minghao stumbles and hits his hip on the back of the couch. 

Mingyu giggles and presses up behind him, arms wrapping around his waist and encouraging him to waddle to his bedroom. “Right, left, right, left,” he chants, laughing when they both bump into the doorframe again. He’s hardly in a state to be the one caring for Minghao, considering he’s been drinking a shocking mix of beer and whatever the fuck Soonyoung ordered for the table all evening, but Minghao would never say no to being held like this. 

He doesn’t like to admit it, but his alcohol tolerance is pretty terrible. Wine is usually the safer choice, but there’s a dangerous line around the five glass mark that flips his brain from _happy_ to _horny_ and he can’t remember how many glasses he’s had. 

As they move into the muted light of Mingyu’s bedroom, his mind mellows into a dull static punctured only by the hyper-awareness of Mingyu’s hands resting against his stomach, heavy and warm through the thin material of his blouse. Did he order another glass before they left? He definitely had some sangria. When did he have the sangria?

“Time to lie down, Myungho,” Mingyu says in his ear. His lips catch one of Minghao’s piercings and Minghao’s knees wobble. 

“Do you want some water?” Seokmin appears next to him, considerably more sober because he has work in the morning. He pushes Minghao’s hair out of his eyes. The touch nudges his head back against Mingyu’s shoulder.

“I’m not drunk,” he repeats, trying to sound stern. Mingyu laughs breathily into his neck and Minghao pulls away before his body can betray him any further. He crawls onto the bed and rests against the pillows, legs stretched out. “Why are we in your bedroom?” he frowns.

Mingyu shrugs. “Just in case.” When Minghao stares at him, he sighs. “I don’t want you to be sick on your sheets. They’re expensive.”

“Oh,” Minghao exhales. If he were drunk on champagne he might have cried.

“Ah Kim Mingyu, so selfless,” Seokmin teases, sitting down on the edge of the mattress with his legs crossed. He touches Minghao’s knee gently like a reminder, as if Minghao could ever forget he was there.

Mingyu wriggles at the compliment and eagerly shuffles along the covers on his knees and settles with his back against Minghao’s chest, body caged in by his thighs. Minghao presses his cheek against Mingyu’s temple and exhales, content. 

Seokmin smiles at them fondly. “You’re so soft when you’re drunk,” he says.

“Don’t let him hear you say that,” Mingyu whispers loudly, yelping when Minghao pinches his side. 

“Maybe he was talking to you,” Minghao mumbles. Mingyu’s long limbs are heavy and hazardous after he’s had a few drinks; his hands have already started wandering, thumb pressing into the seam of Minghao’s jeans along his calf. It’s nothing new, nor is it a prelude to anything at all, but the wine thrumming through Minghao’s body tells him differently. He takes a steadying breath and directs his attention to Seokmin like it’ll offer a reprieve. Somehow, it’s even worse. 

Seokmin has moved so he’s lying down with his head beside Minghao’s hip. His hair is mussed up from the nervous habits of his fingers and he’s stretched out so pretty with his eyes closed and one hand behind his head, and Minghao can’t stop thinking about what he might look like spread out under someone else’s hands. Under his own. How he might move and sound and taste. If he likes someone to be all over him the way he likes to be all over other people. 

He has such good hands. Minghao wants to know if he can use them.

It’s been a while since he’s had these kinds of thoughts beyond the safety of his bedroom at 2am, and now that he’s on the train, there’s no way of getting off. The wine dulls the panic like a balm and he decides that maybe saying what’s on his mind wouldn’t be so bad, for once. 

“Seokmin-ah,” he says softly. Seokmin opens an eye and tips his chin to make eye contact, humming, but Minghao chickens out and says the next part into Mingyu’s ear like it’s a secret. “So beautiful, isn’t he?” 

Mingyu tips his head to the side and Minghao feels more than he sees him grin at Seokmin who’s blushing sweetly, giggling like he finds their words ridiculous. 

“Yeah,” sighs Mingyu. “Our Seokminnie, breaking hearts everywhere he goes.” He pats Seokmin’s stomach and doesn’t take his hand back.

Seokmin’s shoulders move up to meet his ears. Minghao moves one of his hands from where it’s been tracing a mindless path along Mingyu’s chest to gently track the blush under Seokmin’s skin with his fingertips. He lets his fingers thread through Seokmin’s hair where it’s fanning out on the covers. Seokmin sighs at the ministrations, but he’s still visibly squirming under the attention. 

Mingyu pokes his ribs. “What, what, what? You don’t believe us?”

Seokmin laughs sadly, eyes closing again. “I’m not breaking anyone’s hearts,” he says. 

“If only you knew,” Minghao says, drawing his hand back. 

Seokmin’s eyes fly open. “What?” 

Minghao’s breath catches. He hadn’t meant to say that out loud. He wades through the wine-haze to come up with an excuse but Mingyu—oblivious, wonderful Mingyu—saves him from explaining himself.

“Right? I’ve had so many people ask me for your number on campus, it’s ridiculous,” he says, tripping over his words in his haste to get them out. “Last week that barista at the library gave me his number on the receipt and I said oh, thanks, and he said no, it’s for your friend, and I felt like an idiot, it was so embarrassing.”

Seokmin’s brow shifts with disbelief. “On Monday? You never gave me anyone’s number.”

“Oh,” Mingyu deflates, “I, um. Well I might have… thrown it away.”

Seokmin laughs. “Why would you do that?”

“He’s an asshole! He always burns the coffee and also, I don’t like his hair.”

“That’s—oh my god, Mingyu,” Seokmin wheezes, dangerously close to falling off the bed. 

“Whatever,” Mingyu pouts, letting Minghao nuzzle his cheek. “You deserve the best kind of person. Guys like that shouldn’t even have a chance.”

The laughter gives way to a breathless sort of quiet. 

Seokmin’s chest is rising and falling like waves and Minghao aches to think he would ever think of himself as anything but perfect. He loves both of these boys with all of his soul and his body, and the feeling of it rushes through his body like a waterfall, forceful and unstoppable; this time, when his hands and mouth start moving, Minghao lets them. 

“You’re too good for just anyone to have, Seokmin-ah,” he says. His left hand travels around the side of Mingyu’s neck to rest against his throat, and he feels him swallow under his fingertips. He brings his other hand on a path from Mingyu’s elbow, to the swell of his bicep, up along his collarbone and down to the valley of his sternum. 

Seokmin’s eyes follow his movements. It makes him feel drunker, bolder. Reckless. 

“Mingyu-yah,” he says into Mingyu’s ear, “tell him how handsome he is, I don’t think he believes us.”

Mingyu laughs weakly. “I think he does.”

“Just to be sure,” Minghao says softly, both hands travelling under Mingyu’s arms now to rest on his waist and his stomach, toying with the hem of his shirt. 

“You’re the most handsome man I know,” Mingyu says quietly. 

“Including Jeonghan-hyung?” Seokmin asks, acting to cover up just how pleased he is. 

“Who? Who’s that?” Mingyu asks loudly. “I don’t know that person. Only Lee Seokmin, the most beautiful man who has ever been in my bed.” 

Seokmin laughs and hits his leg, and Minghao joins in, light-headed and in love. His fingers catch on a ticklish spot on Mingyu’s side as they all lean into their laughter and one of his giggles hitch in the centre, and oh. That’s a terrible discovery to make. He catches Seokmin’s eye and finds him grinning sideways, like he’s thinking about something else—like he’s considering Mingyu in Minghao’s lap and Minghao’s fingers digging into his waist in a different context—but no, that’s just Minghao projecting. 

That’s just the red wine and Mingyu’s inescapable body heat and the lingering spice of cologne under his jaw and the pressure of Seokmin’s beautiful hands on Minghao’s ankle all spinning together in Minghao’s mind like clothes in a washing machine, around and around and around.

What would happen, though, if Minghao were to tilt his chin just so and press his mouth against Mingyu’s neck? How would they react if he pulled away from Mingyu’s body only to press himself against Seokmin like he wanted something from him? 

He sees himself doing it. He just can’t see them reciprocating. At least not in the way he wants them to.

Seokmin’s phone starts ringing loud enough to give Minghao a fright, and Seokmin answers the call with a laugh. “Ah, hyung, what do you want?”

The unmistakable noise of Drunk Soonyoung spills into the room, loud even through the receiver pressed against Seokmin’s ear. Minghao goes back to patting his head as he talks. Mingyu has gone lax, like he’s falling asleep.

“I have to go and pick them up,” Seokmin says eventually, moving to stand. 

“What? No, don’t leave,” Mingyu says thickly. “Tell them to get a taxi.”

“Hyung can’t find his wallet,” Seokmin explains, but he looks like he agrees with Mingyu. “And he said something about karaoke.”

“Oh, how could you ever refuse?” Minghao drawls. 

Seokmin beams at him. He catches Minghao’s hand when it drops from his hair. His fingers press into Minghao’s pulse point, thumb tracing the ridges of his knuckles, and Minghao has to bite his cheek to keep himself from begging Seokmin to stay. 

“Drink some water,” Seokmin says, pointing at them as he walks backwards out of the bedroom. “I’ll see you later. Love you.”

“Say it back!” Mingyu calls. “No, wait, that’s your line. I love you, too!”

Seokmin puts his hands on his hips. Minghao sighs, “Love you.”

Satisfied, Seokmin leaves them with a flourished bow and the click of the front door. 

“I’m getting pins and needles, Mingyu-yah, move over,” Minghao groans, nudging Mingyu to the side so they can both lie down. 

“I’m asleep, sorry,” says Mingyu. Minghao digs his fingers into his ribs. “Ah! Okay! I’m moving, I’m moving.”

They settle atop the covers, still fully dressed and facing each other. 

“I wish Seokminnie lived here,” Mingyu says mournfully, pressing his pout into the pillow. “Would be so much fun.”

Minghao hums and presses his fingers through Mingyu’s hair, trailing gently down over his neck, tapping his cheek once before pulling his hand back to tuck under his own cheek. He doesn’t respond, because Mingyu doesn’t need to know about the sketches at the bottom of his desk drawer that depict a living room rearranged to accommodate three people in the apartment instead of two. 

* * *

**APRIL**

* * *

The young girl behind the counter pointedly opens the register. 

“I think they’re closing,” says Minghao. “Let’s go.” 

It’s perfect timing. Mingyu looks like he doesn’t want to leave, but he’d never inconvenience anyone on purpose, so he throws away their cups and thanks the baristas three times before Minghao pushes him outside.

The sun is starting to set, bleeding orange and pink along the sidewalk as they wander back to their apartment. Mingyu (hopefully) has no idea that it’s currently full of their friends all waiting to jump out from behind the furniture with party poppers and a war cry of “Happy birthday!”. 

It’s been a headache to organise, mostly because Seungkwan kept trying to take the reins, but at least Minghao didn’t have to worry about Seokmin spoiling the surprise. He legitimately forgot it was happening until Minghao asked him to buy the cake this morning. He’s been distracted this week—tired and a bit out of it—but Minghao has been too busy with work and the logistics of this party to ask into it beyond telling him to sleep more and buying him a new tin of herbal tea.

Minghao shrugs off his jacket as they walk, the A-Peach plushie he won for Mingyu at the arcade poking out of his tote bag. It took him almost twenty minutes and too many tokens to win, but the look on Mingyu’s face had been worth it. 

When they round the block to reach their apartment building, Mingyu frowns and stops. Minghao takes a few steps past him before doing the same. 

“You okay?” he asks. Mingyu blinks rapidly and focuses on Minghao, but his eyes still look faraway.

“Yeah, um,” Mingyu clears his throat, “I just got dizzy for a second.” He brings his left hand over his right wrist, rubbing absently, and Minghao valiantly ignores the way his stomach drops. He plasters on a smile. 

“Do you need me to hold your hand?” He doesn’t wait for a response before grabbing Mingyu’s left hand in his and tugging him along. He can feel his phone buzzing with texts from the others, but if he looks now then Mingyu will want to see, and the surprise will be ruined, so he charges forward with Mingyu in tow, still dazed. 

Minghao can’t think about it now. If he starts thinking about it, he won’t stop. It’s bullshit. It’s not real. He’s been mentally preparing for this day since he met Mingyu four years ago, before he even fell in love with him. It’s been a cold shadow hanging over Minghao’s shoulder, but he made it through Seokmin’s twenty-first and he’s still safely treading water. 

None of it’s real, anyway. He won’t lose Mingyu to a stranger. He’ll still be his Mingyu. It’ll be okay.

The second they get inside the building, Mingyu pulls his hand back and makes a beeline for the stairs, taking them two at a time. 

“Mingyu, wait— _fuck_ ,” Minghao hisses, chasing after him and cursing his stupid long legs. He pulls his phone out and ignores all his notifications so he can text Seungkwan, _20 seconds!!!!_ before sprinting to catch up with Mingyu. This was not part of the plan. Minghao blames the frantic pace of his heart on the last flight of stairs. 

He shoves through the heavy stairwell door and jogs the last few steps to where Mingyu is standing, chest heaving, in front of their door. 

“I don’t have the key,” he says desperately. Minghao knows that. He made sure, so that he couldn’t ruin the surprise by going inside before Minghao could put everything in place. 

“Why the hell,” Minghao wheezes, “did we just run up the stairs?”

“I just—” Mingyu looks at the door and back to Minghao with wide eyes. He looks like he’s about to jump out of his skin. “I don’t know.” 

When Minghao looks back on this moment, as he will a thousand times over, he will tell himself that he saw it coming. But the truth is, nothing could have prepared him for what happened next.

He steps in front of Mingyu to open the door, but it’s already started opening from the inside. There’s a muffled hiss of, “Seokmin what are you—” before the door flies open to reveal Seokmin on the other side, wearing the same wide-eyed, breathless expression as Mingyu. 

His gaze darts frantically away from Minghao and once it settles on Mingyu, his whole body tenses and relaxes in a fraction of a second. Minghao hears a sharp intake of breath from behind him.

“Well,” Minghao says shortly. “Surprise!”

The others don’t react. Soonyoung and Jeonghan are crowded onto the armchair, frozen, and behind Joshua’s shoulder Seungkwan is holding his hands over his mouth. Wonwoo has a party hat strapped under his chin and it clashes comically with the shock on his face, but nobody is laughing. 

Jeonghan’s eyes cut to Minghao like a signal, but Minghao isn’t looking at him. He’s looking at Seokmin, who is looking through him to Mingyu.

Minghao is still standing in between them, and suddenly it feels like he shouldn’t be.

The second he moves aside, they crash into each other like waves, hands coming up to frame each other’s faces. The contact brings them to their knees, foreheads pressed together, breathing loud enough to echo through the apartment. 

Minghao has nowhere to go, trapped against the unforgiving wood of the doorframe.

“Oh my god,” Seokmin starts chanting, hands moving frantically from Mingyu’s cheeks to his neck, to his shoulders, bringing him into a bone-crushing hug. “I can’t believe—oh my _god_.” His voice cracks as he begins to cry, and Mingyu laughs wetly, swaying them side to side with his arms wrapped around Seokmin’s waist. 

Seungkwan has started crying, too, and Wonwoo’s face has brightened into a smile so big it strains the elastic of his hat. Minghao stumbles into the apartment, away from where Mingyu and Seokmin are still whispering frantically to each other and smiling bigger than he’s ever seen. 

Joshua’s hand settles on his shoulder, and he can hardly feel it. 

He can hardly feel anything.

Seungkwan is the first person to burst forward, fluttering around the pair like a butterfly, congratulating and hugging them, pulling them to their feet, grabbing their arms and pulling them into the apartment. 

“Let us see it,” Seungkwan says frantically. 

Mingyu holds out his right wrist, and Seokmin holds out his left, tears still streaming down his face and catching in the corners of his smile. 

Their Mark is objectively beautiful: a braid of jasmine and silk, almost pearlescent in its freshness, wrapping around their wrists. In a few weeks it will fade to look like it was always part of their skin. 

“Can you believe it?” Seokmin is smiling at Minghao, and it vaguely registers he’s being spoken to, but he’s still too shocked to respond.

“Ah, but hyung doesn’t believe in any of this, right?” Seungkwan says, goading. He would never say it if he knew, but none of them do except for Jeonghan and Joshua. 

And no, Minghao doesn’t believe in soulmates or red string or fate or any other way you could spin it, but he recognises the look in Mingyu’s eyes. It’s the same one Soonyoung has been giving Jeonghan every day of his life since Minghao met them; the same wide-eyed, breathless, forgiving that glazes over Fated people’s faces when they so much as hear their partner’s name.

Somehow, this is worse than anything Minghao could have prepared himself for. 

That after all this time, he didn’t end up losing either of them to a stranger. 

Everyone is looking at him, now. It feels like they’re waiting for a response. Minghao digs into the deepest recess of self-control he has—the one he has been cautiously rationing for the past few years to carefully conceal his all-encompassing love for his best friends—and drains it completely with the effort it takes to say one single word:

“Congratulations!”

And then he stops treading water,

and slips under.

*

The party goes on despite the crushing pressure settling down on Minghao’s chest and all around his ribs. It gets worse with every giddy smile Seokmin sends his way. Minghao has never seen him look this happy before. 

The part of him that is always glad for his friends’ happiness is flourishing, but it’s not enough to make up for the emptiness building alongside it.

Seokmin finds him hiding in the kitchen after they’ve finished eating the cake.

“There you are!” he says brightly, draping himself over Minghao’s back. “What are you doing?” Minghao starts fumbling for an excuse but Seokmin breezes past the question, pulling away to sit on the counter next to him. “The cake was better than I thought. Honestly I don’t know what I bought, I was so out of it this week.” He gasps. “Oh my god, was it because of this? I’ve read about that happening but I never thought—wow. I still can’t believe it. Out of everyone in the world… it feels like I’m dreaming. Do my cheeks feel hot?” 

Seokmin grabs Minghao’s willing hands and presses them against his cheeks with his own hands over them, bright eyes locking onto Minghao’s. It’s a poor man’s imitation of his earlier position with Mingyu; the waves slamming against Minghao’s chest come quicker like a storm.

Seokmin frowns and pulls their joined hands off his face and into his lap. He’s got a bit more height than usual thanks to his seat on the counter and has to look down to keep eye contact. 

“Myungho?” It sounds like _are you okay?_ but he doesn’t say it, like he already knows the answer. Minghao curses himself for being so transparent.

He looks down at their hands where they rest in Seokmin’s lap. His Mark stands out like a house fire on the horizon. 

“You know this doesn’t change anything, right?” Seokmin says. He taps Minghao under the chin to make him look up again, and the soft joy of his features has turned to marble. “I know you’re not—this isn’t something you care about—but either way, it’s still us. Just me and Mingyu. Nothing will change.” 

_It is something I care about,_ Minghao wants to say, _because it’s you, you’re all I’ve ever cared about, it changes everything._ He wants, he wants, he wants—

He pushes his shoulders back and recites his lines. “I’m happy for you, Seokmin-ah. Both of you.”

Seokmin smiles and his shoulders droop in relief. 

“Oh, please don’t cry,” Minghao groans.

“I’m not crying,” Seokmin says wetly. Minghao huffs a laugh and pulls him off the counter so they can hug properly. He hooks his chin over Seokmin’s shoulder and lets their bodies sway side to side, moving in a little circle. 

After a few moments of quiet, Minghao hums. “Does this mean you’re going to start paying rent?”

The feeling of Seokmin laughing against him is like sunshine. 

They join the rest of the group in the living room and Seokmin immediately goes to sit next to Mingyu. There isn’t enough space for Minghao to fit with them. Normally it wouldn’t be a barrier, but tonight Minghao takes the empty spot next to Soonyoung instead. 

“You okay?” Mingyu asks him. His cheeks are flushed and there’s still a dash of icing across his nose. Seokmin wipes it off and licks his finger with an exaggerated noise.

“At least wait until we’ve left,” Seungkwan says primly, and Seokmin throws an orange rind at him.

Minghao has to raise his voice over their squabbling. “I’m just tired from organising this party for you _and_ keeping it a secret,” he says. “Do you know how hard it is to keep Soonyoung-hyung from talking?” 

“Hey!” Soonyoung yelps. 

“Wait, you organised this?” Mingyu asks, delighted. 

Minghao nods. Mingyu wriggles out from beside Seokmin and gets Minghao off the couch with a single tug of his wrist. He yelps, loses his balance and crashes into Mingyu’s chest, but it doesn’t matter—he’s already being lifted off his feet at the force of Mingyu’s hug. 

“Thank you, Myungho!” says Mingyu, swinging him like a ragdoll. 

“Put me down.”

“Not yet.”

“Do it right now.”

“Okay, sorry.” Mingyu steps back from him with flushed cheeks. It’s like he’s lost control of his limbs, stumbling around the living room, drunk, only to find his balance when Seokmin collects him into his lap once more, cheek pressed against Mingyu’s shoulder and arms wrapped tight around his middle.

Minghao is grateful for the distraction when his phone buzzes in his pocket. He pulls it out and frowns.

**jeonghan [23:45]**

_go along with it and thank me later_

He leans forward to look past Soonyoung at the same second Jeonghan stands with a clap. 

“Whew, what a night. I’m exhausted.” He turns to Minghao. “Do you want to come back with us tonight? Leave these two to… bond?”

Wonwoo wolf whistles and Seokmin says, “Ah, hyung!” with bright red cheeks.

Minghao stands up. “Sure, I’ll get my stuff.”

Mingyu frowns. “Hey, no you don’t have to—”

“Too late! Can’t hear you!” Minghao calls from his bedroom. He pulls things into a backpack mechanically and settles on a neutral expression before going back to the living room. Everyone is moving, cleaning and chatting. Mingyu catches him by the elbow.

“Seriously, you don’t need to leave. Nothing’s going to um,” Mingyu’s ears go red, “we’re not going to… you don’t have to sleep somewhere else.”

Minghao’s body betrays him by turning hot at the way Mingyu is flushing, mind flooding with images of Mingyu in Seokmin’s lap for a completely different reason. He clears his throat and smiles tightly. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be back after work tomorrow. Enjoy the last,” he checks his watch, “eleven minutes of your birthday.”

“Thanks, Myungho,” Mingyu says softly. “Seriously.”

Everybody pours back out of the kitchen and Minghao is whisked out of the door before he can rethink his decision to leave.

*

Minghao goes boneless the moment they get into Joshua’s car. He feels like he just ran a marathon, jaw clenched and chest tight. Jeonghan moves into the middle seat and forces him to hold his hand, and Minghao clings, grateful. They pull out of the parking spot and join the traffic to Joshua and Jeonghan’s apartment in silence.

As always, Soonyoung is the first to break the quiet.

“Is anyone gonna tell me what’s happening to Myungho?” he asks, looking back at them from the passenger seat. 

“Yah you seriously haven’t pieced it together?” Joshua scoffs, changing lanes. “Are you dumb?”

“Hey!” Jeonghan leans forward to slap Joshua’s shoulder. “But seriously, babe,” he says to Soonyoung, “it’s been years. Figure it out. I know you can do it.”

Soonyoung scrunches his nose and presses his fingertips together against his chin. After a minute, he says, “Is he… you know… in love with Mingyu?”

Joshua hums and uses the hand resting on the gearstick to hold his thumb out like a Roman emperor deciding a gladiator’s fate.

“Seokminnie?” 

Joshua makes a sound like he’s getting warmer. 

Soonyoung gasps. “Both of them?”

“Ding ding ding,” Minghao says flatly. Joshua’s thumb goes up. 

Soonyoung moves so quickly the seatbelt locks and throws him back against the seat. “Oh my god!” he cries, excited. Then his face falls and he says, “Oh my god,” but this time it’s with a sad sort of horror that Minghao feels in his bones. “Myungho, I’m—shit I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.”

“Not your fault, hyung,” Minghao says. He pulls away from Jeonghan to lean against the window with his eyes closed. Joshua turns on the radio to drown out the heaviness in the air.

Minghao reaches back blindly for Jeonghan’s hand after a while, and Jeonghan gives him the small comfort without a word. His face twists up against the cold glass, but he doesn’t cry. It’s not going to change anything.

*

The next night Minghao gets home from work to find Mingyu and Seokmin holding hands over the table as they eat dinner. There’s a place set for Minghao and they’ve left a lot of food for him, even though Seokmin surely could have eaten all of their servings and still asked for dessert. 

The sight is nothing new, but the implications are entirely different now. Minghao bows his head to his new reality like it’s a storm he has to push through.

Universe, one. Minghao, zero.

* * *

**NOVEMBER**

* * *

It hurts like healing.

* * *

**APRIL**

* * *

It hurts.

* * *

**OCTOBER**

* * *

Minghao wakes up with words on the tip of his tongue and colours receding from his vision. He stares at his ceiling, heart racing, trying to remember what he dreamed about, but it feels like grasping at smoke: the harder he tries, the faster it disperses. He hasn’t dreamed in years. He labels it as a fluke and buries it with schoolwork. 

Then it happens again.

It happens every night for a week.

They’re never clear—just smudges of colour and feeling and sound—but he always wakes feeling short of breath and displaced in his own bed, as though somebody has tugged his soul from his body and thrown it back like dirt in a grave. 

The feeling starts to follow him through the day and he gets so jittery that he can’t concentrate on menial tasks. His schoolwork suffers and Wonwoo tries to send him home during his afternoon shift at the stationery store. His body feels like it’s made of concrete. He wants to scream, but he doesn’t tell anyone what’s wrong until it happens for the eighth day in a row. 

He’s at a coffee shop with Joshua to study, but he’s been staring into his mug ever since Hansol set it down on the table. 

“Myungho?” Joshua snaps his fingers under his nose to catch his attention. Minghao moves in increments, like he’s waking up; it feels like he is. Joshua is frowning at him. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Minghao opens his notebook to a random page. “Just tired.”

Joshua looks unconvinced, but he doesn’t push. Another useless few minutes pass and Minghao is still no closer to absorbing information than he was when they sat down. It’s extremely frustrating. Minghao has better control over his body than… whatever this is. 

“Hyung,” he says. Joshua hums as he copies something over from his textbook. “Do you ever have weird dreams?” 

“What?” Joshua laughs, but when he looks up to meet Minghao’s eyes, his smile drops. “I mean, sometimes? Define weird.”

Minghao shifts uncomfortably. He can’t even remember what he’s been dreaming about, let alone explain why it’s affecting him so strongly. “Nevermind.”

“No, come on,” Joshua whines, reaching over the table to tap Minghao’s wrist with his pen. “Try me. I won’t judge.”

“You will.”

Joshua smirks. “Only a little bit.”

Minghao sighs. “I don’t know how to explain it. I’ve just been… dreaming. Every night this week.”

“Okay,” Joshua says slowly. “Not that weird. Actually pretty common.” Minghao throws him a scathing look. “Alright, sorry. What have you been dreaming about? Are they nightmares?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I go to sleep and wake up feeling like I’ve had a heart attack.” Minghao brings a hand to his chest and rubs at it absently. “It’s like I forget what I’ve dreamed about, but my body doesn’t.”

Joshua doesn’t say anything. He’s staring at Minghao’s hand, at the skin of his wrist that is exposed by the open cuffs of his blouse. 

When Minghao notices, he tugs his sleeves down and leaves his hands in his lap. “What?” he asks shortly. 

Joshua blinks and smiles, but the angle of it is all wrong. “Nothing, sorry,” he says. “That sounds rough. Maybe you should see a doctor? There’s a free clinic near the Education building.”

Minghao hums. 

“It’ll pass,” Joshua says, like he understands. Impossible, given that Minghao doesn’t know what’s happening to his own body, but he takes comfort in his assurance anyway. 

*

The doctor is a middle-aged woman named Eunji. She has kind eyes and her jewellery is the same shade of pink as her dress. She listens to Minghao mumble his reasons for being there and writes something on a notepad before leaning back in her chair.

“What year were you born?” she asks. 

Minghao blinks. “1997,” he says. “Did I write it incorrectly on my—”

“No, no,” Eunji waves the hand she isn’t using to write. “I just wanted to double check.”

“I’m not sure what that has to do with…” Minghao trails off when he spots the ring of discolouration underneath one of her bangles. His spine locks. “You’re joking.”

“It’s a common symptom,” Eunji says gently, like Minghao is a caged animal.

“Symptoms imply that there’s an illness,” Minghao says coldly. “I’ll agree with you there, but that’s about it.” 

Eunji holds her palms up. “We don’t have to talk about it, but I think you should at least—”

“Thank you for your time,” Minghao says, cutting her off. “I’ll just deal with this myself.” He bows and leaves with a white-knuckled grip on the strap of his bag and a sour taste in his mouth.

*

It’s only after he gets off the bus that Minghao notices he still hasn’t relaxed his grip on his bag. He takes a deep breath, flexing his fingers and rolling his head on his neck. He’s no stranger to sleep-deprivation, but this feels worse than usual. Worse still, because he swallowed his pride and went to a doctor about it, only to have her take his real health problem and turn it into a joke. 

Everything is stacking like bricks on his shoulders and he feels pushed to the limit, like one wrong word could make him snap, so all he wants to do is go to his room and avoid everyone for the rest of the day. 

So naturally, Mingyu is waiting at the table when he walks into the apartment. 

“Hey!” he says brightly, putting his phone away. 

“Hi.” Minghao kicks his shoes off and starts walking with purpose to his bedroom, but Mingyu catches his wrist as he passes. He pulls it back a little too viciously.

Mingyu frowns. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m tired.”

“Oh no.” Mingyu’s concern pulls at every part of his face. “Have you been sleeping alright?”

Minghao scoffs. “Obviously not.”

“Woah, sorry for asking.”

“It’s fine,” Minghao says, controlled. “I’m going to my room.” He moves again, but Mingyu moves with him, blocking his path. “Mingyu. Please move.”

“Why?” he says, wheedling. He grins and starts to poke Minghao, “Why, why, why?” Minghao twists away but he doesn’t let up. “Come on, Seokminnie’s out getting food and we’re going to watch a movie. It’ll be fun! I feel like I haven’t seen you all week.” 

He tries to pull Minghao towards him and Minghao snaps. 

“Stop, Mingyu, _stop._ ” He puts half a foot of space between them, hands tensed into fists. “You haven’t seen me all week because I’m busy. I haven’t slept properly in six days and I’m behind on all of my work. I don’t have _time_ to watch a stupid movie with you and your stupid boyfriend!”

The front door closing sounds like a gunshot.

Minghao whips around with his heart in his stomach to find Seokmin, frozen, shoes still on and arms laden with shopping bags.

“Honey, I’m home?” he laughs weakly. And Minghao knows every one of his smiles, could draw them from memory, with his eyes closed, and this—this is the worst one. He hasn’t seen it since February. 

“Seokmin—”

“I got one of everything since I didn’t know what you’d feel like.” Seokmin puts the bags on the kitchen counter too heavily, and something cracks against the marble. “And some soju. Um. Don’t mind me. I need to…” He all but flees to Mingyu’s room and the tension in the air cracks like a whip.

Minghao spins back around to face Mingyu and pushes his chest, hard. “Why didn’t you tell me he was there?”

“How was I supposed to know you’d say that? What the fuck, Myungho?”

Minghao scoffs in response and turns to find Seokmin, but Mingyu stops him with a hand on his chest. “No. You don’t get to talk to him right now.”

Minghao sees red. He wraps unforgiving fingers around Mingyu’s wrist, over his Mark, and holds it up between them like a murder weapon in a courtroom. 

“This doesn’t mean you own him.” He tosses Mingyu’s hand back at him and tries to ignore the hurt in his eyes. “I’m going for a walk. Don’t wait up, and tell Seokmin I didn’t mean it. I’m tired and it was a shitty thing to say.” 

“Tell him yourself,” Mingyu says, but it’s more pleading than petulant.

Minghao pulls on his shoes and leaves without looking back.

*

There’s a sad excuse for a park at the end of their street, and that’s where he goes. The sun has already set and it’s a lot colder than it was during the day, but he ignores it as he sinks into the bench closest to the sidewalk. There’s a young woman idly watching her kid on the swings and an old couple huddled together on the bench next to his. He can’t see their wrists, but he knows. He hates that he knows, but he’s learned too many tells over the past few months to plead total ignorance.

It’s the way Seokmin’s head tilts back for a kiss before Mingyu has even walked into the kitchen. The way Mingyu’s body curves into Seokmin’s like a sunflower whenever they touch. The way their moods reflect each other like sunrise over a lake. 

The way Minghao has to sit and watch it all happen from the other side of the table. 

No matter how often they reach out, how good and normal things might seem when they’re all together, the separation exists like a pane of glass between them in a prison, like Minghao will only ever be a part of it if they choose to speak into the phone instead of only to each other. 

Minghao never thought of himself as lonely, but things like that creep up on you. 

He tells himself he’s independent and self-sustaining, and he is, but right now he’s also cold and tired and consciously pushing away the most important people in his life simply because he can’t stomach their happiness. 

It’s so selfish. They’ve been nothing but wonderful and considerate and Minghao is repaying them by hurting them. He’s never been good at keeping his mouth shut when Mingyu pushes him like that, but it’s not an excuse. 

He groans into his palms. The old couple looks at him sideways, concerned, and he hastily sits up and pulls out his phone. He unlocks it to check the time and his eyebrows bend to meet each other in the middle. 

**mingyuuuuu [2 missed calls]**

**mingyuuuuu [19:40]**

_sorry for being annoying_

_u can use my last bath bomb, i left it next to the sink_

Minghao’s chest tightens. He scrolls down to his chat with Seokmin.

**seokminnie [19:47]**

_mingyu’s changing your bedsheets for you omg_

_what did u say to him_

**seokminnie [19:59]**

_myungho-yahhhhh_

_come home, it’s cold_

**minghao [20:00]**

_okay_

*

The floor lamp in the living room is on when Minghao returns. The dishwasher is humming rhythmically and his sheets are hung up next to the television, draped between the back of two chairs and a drying rack.

Seokmin hasn’t noticed him yet—too engrossed in whatever he’s watching on his phone as he lays on the couch in his pyjamas. Minghao watches his eyebrows twitch, watches how his eyes widen with attention. His face has always been so expressive. It’s what makes him such a wonderful actor and a terrible liar. That, and the way he wears his heart on his sleeve and trusts everyone to handle it with care. 

Everyone, including Minghao. The memory of Seokmin all but fleeing from Minghao’s words invites a wave of guilt that feels like fire on an oil spill: within seconds, it’s everywhere, and it sears.

The sound of the front door closing gets Seokmin’s attention. “Hey,” he says, locking his phone. 

“Hey,” Minghao tells his shoes as he lines them up.

Seokmin clicks his fingers and points at himself. “Come here, I want to tell you something.”

Minghao shuffles obediently along the rug in his socks but he hesitates at the end of the couch. Seokmin reaches up to gently pull his fingers until he crouches down and their faces are level. He doesn’t look as angry as Minghao expected, but then again, he never really does.

“What you said made me feel like shit.” His voice is gentle but his eyes are shining in the lamplight. It feels worse than being yelled at.

“Seokmin I’m—”

“Let me finish,” he smiles. Minghao presses his lips together and nods. Seokmin takes a steadying breath and starts to talk like it’s something he rehearsed while Minghao was gone. “I know you didn’t mean it. I also know it takes a lot for you to snap like that, and I want to apologise because I—we—should have tried to talk to you sooner. So I’m sorry that you felt like you couldn’t talk to us about whatever it is that you’re going through. I noticed you were a bit off this week but I thought you’d ask for help if you needed it. I guess it’s not that simple, sometimes.” Seokmin chest caves in with an exhale. “We miss you, Myungho. I miss you.”

Minghao feels dangerously choked up. “I’m right here.”

A tear escapes down the beautiful bridge of Seokmin’s nose. He looks up at the ceiling. “I know. It just… lately it doesn’t feel like it. Sometimes. I don’t know. Don’t listen to me, I’m emotional.” He laughs like it’s embarrassing to be honest. Minghao wipes a teardrop away before it hits his hairline.

“I really didn’t mean it,” Minghao says. The dishwasher hiccups. Seokmin turns his head to look at him again.

“Okay,” he breathes. “Good. One more thing…”

“Of course.”

Seokmin grins. “Cuddle me.” His chestnut hair is fanned out on the pillow and his sleep shirt is so stretched to hell that it’s pooling around his wrists and collarbones like water. He smells like sleep and chamomile tea and Minghao wants so much that he aches, but—

“Don’t you want Mingyu for that?” he asks.

Seokmin’s eyes widen and immediately soften and oh, how Minghao loves it when he looks at him like this: like he needs him. It’s been so long.

“If I wanted him right now, I would be with him. But I’m with you,” says Seokmin, like it’s as simple as that, like the Mark on his wrist isn’t openly taunting Minghao. Objectively, it’s beautiful, delicate—the colour now faded to look like a birthmark—but Minghao will never be able to look at it and see anything but a lost future.

Seokmin is still waiting for a response. He’s patient, but much like Jeonghan, he’s not above prodding, so Minghao obediently crawls over him to lay in the space between his body and the back of the couch. Seokmin pulls Minghao’s arm over his waist and holds their hands against his chest while Minghao presses his nose into his hair, closing his eyes. It’s so easy and familiar, but it feels almost alien after all these months of pulling away, and that distance from something Minghao grew up without doubting even once—that hurts.

The quiet descends once more. Seokmin seems unusually tense. After a few minutes of fidgeting he turns over in a flurry of knees and elbows so that he’s facing Minghao, their cheeks pressed against the same pillow. He takes a steadying breath, then brushes their noses together once, twice, three times and Minghao’s heart rate picks up so much he’s sure Seokmin can see his neck jumping with it, but it’s nothing new. 

They’ve always been physically affectionate. Minghao can’t remember exactly when it started, but he knows that Seokmin was the first person he felt unconditionally safe and comfortable around. Enough that when Seokmin knocked their foreheads together one day while they were doing homework, eyes smiling and beautiful, Minghao leaned in and rubbed their noses together because his mother used to do that to him and it always made him feel calm and loved. Seokmin had been frozen and wide-eyed when Minghao pulled back, and Minghao almost apologised because it was probably crossing some sort of line, but as always, Seokmin surprised him. He leaned back in to do it a second time, laughter falling between them like petals in spring, and the loving built as it was wont to do. 

It’s not something they do as often anymore. Maybe when they started university they felt obligated to be more mature, to catch up to everyone around them; certainly, since April, Minghao hasn’t done anything of the sort, too nervous to stray beyond hugging or draping himself over Seokmin or Mingyu’s back when he’s feeling particularly needy. 

But Seokmin leaned in first. It feels safer that way, even if it hurts ten times more.

“Okay?” Seokmin asks. Minghao nods. “Ah, what are you thinking about that’s making you frown like that?” Seokmin brings a hand between them to tap gently between Minghao’s eyebrows and then cups his cheek. Abruptly, Minghao feels like crying, but he refuses to let it show.

“Just tired,” he says, and it’s not a lie even though it feels like one. Seokmin hums sympathetically and shuffles to tuck his head under Minghao’s chin, and Minghao tightens his shaking fingers in the material bunching around his shoulder blades. 

They lay like that for a while. Seokmin’s breathing steadies like he’s fallen asleep, and Minghao is just about to do the same when Mingyu pads quietly into view. 

Minghao cranes his neck to look over the tuft of Seokmin’s hair. “Where did you come from?” he asks quietly. He thought Mingyu was asleep.

“Laundry,” says Mingyu, sitting on the rug and crossing his legs. He smells like fabric softener. His eyes dart around like they’re looking for somewhere safe to land. “Did you guys talk?”

“Yes. You didn’t hear?”

Mingyu shrugs. “I put my headphones on in case you didn’t want me listening.” That shocks Minghao and he lets it show on his face. Mingyu grins, “You should give me more credit.”

“I give you enough,” Minghao says. Seokmin snuffles, instantly drawing both his and Mingyu’s eyes down. When Minghao looks back up, Mingyu is wearing his love so plainly on his face that seeing it feels like intruding. One of his hands comes up to trace the line of Seokmin’s shoulder, his ribs, his hip. Minghao wishes he was allowed to want so openly. 

“I’m sorry for snapping at you,” he says quietly. 

Mingyu smiles and meets his eyes again. “It’s okay. I shouldn’t have pushed.”

Minghao nods slightly. “Thank you,” he adds, “for my sheets.”

“It’s nothing,” Mingyu blushes. “You said you were tired. I thought it might help. Also I meant it about the bath bomb—it’s that patchouli one you like, so it yours, if you want it.”

“That’s your favourite one,” Minghao frowns. 

“I can just buy more.” 

It’s just laundry and a bath bomb. Mingyu is only being nice. It shouldn’t make Minghao’s chest pang with such longing, but he gave up reasoning with his feelings a long time ago. 

These days he often finds himself regarding them like a train thundering past on a platform: always a safe distance behind the line while the ground beneath his feet shudders and the wind whips at his hair and his clothes. Every now and then he’ll see the train coming and he’ll think, _what if_ . An intrusive, bizzare and unwelcome thought— _what if._ The train will get closer and closer and his brain will scream at him, _what if what if what if,_ and every time, the train passes. Every time he stays where he is and watches it speed away until it’s a speck in the distance.

He’s never considered acting any differently. Yet, in this moment, with Seokmin in his arms and Mingyu smiling at them sideways with a smudge of laundry powder on his nose, Minghao feels closer to the line than he ever has before. 

* * *

**NOVEMBER**

* * *

Minghao wakes up sweating and gasping for air like he’s on a surgery table. He doesn’t have to even try to remember what he dreamed about this time. It was so bright. Too bright. He can still see spots behind his eyelids; it feels like his body has been flooded with ink and it’s pushing up to the surface of his skin, welling like blood from a wound. 

None of the other dreams made him feel like this. Is he dehydrated? Sick? He reaches out to check the time on his phone and fumbles it, groaning when it clatters to the floor. The light from his lockscreen floods the room in a sickly blue. 

He leans over to read the time, but there’s a message notification that catches his eye instead. It’s from his mother. 

_Happy 21st birthday,_ it begins, and Minghao falls off the bed. 

The dreams. The fucking _dreams_. The exhaustion and the bowstring stretch of his bones and the sinking weight of his skin—they cannot mean what it feels like they do. “No…” he groans, “no no no…” He scrambles to his feet and over to the lightswitch like he’s drunk, hitting it with the heel of his palm. 

The room floods with light and Minghao is presented with his body, his safety, the only thing he truly has for himself when it feels like everything else has fallen from his control, and he does not recognise it. 

He brings his hands in front of his face and a wounded sound tears itself from his chest. The faint beginnings of Marks wrap around each of his wrists. Anyone else would find them beautiful, but Minghao’s only thought is how much he wants to tear them off with his teeth.

He flings open his bedroom door, uncaring of how much noise it makes as he jogs to the bathroom and turns the tap on as hard as it’ll go, plunging his wrists into the sink and scrubbing. 

He’s not breathing right—it’s all sharp and shallow and wrong but how could he possibly tell, when he doesn’t know his own body anymore, when the redness flares up on his wrists like an accusation against him. He starts crying at the sight of himself in the mirror. 

It’s not working, it’s not _working_ , the Marks are as much a part of him as the frightening hatred he feels towards them.

He leaves the tap splashing water violently against the porcelain as he falls to his haunches and cries. All his careful distance for nothing. All his years of pushing back only to be pushed over. 

He doesn’t even have time to think about whoever might be on the other side of his connection before he hears movement in the apartment and he thinks, _Seokmin and Mingyu_. 

He thinks, _You’ve lost them._

“Myungho? Are you okay?” Seokmin appears in the open doorway and Minghao’s bloodstream lights up like a firework display and his vision whites out. 

Suddenly he’s sixteen and speaking Korean that comes out fractured and broken but Seokmin is still holding the words in his palms like they matter. He blinks. Minghao is seventeen and Seokmin is hugging him for the first time, whispering, _it’s okay, Myungho, me too, me too,_ holding him as they both cry in the dark safety of his mother’s home. Seokmin is smiling at him, he’s stealing food off Minghao’s plate, he’s hanging off Minghao’s shoulders and laughing in his ear; Seokmin is his springtime, his equinox, his bright past and his hopeful future.

Seokmin is kneeling in front of Minghao with tears navigating the contours of his smile and Minghao can’t breathe, but it feels like a good thing this time, like he’s just stepped off a rollercoaster, like he just confessed, adrenaline pumping through his body like a baseline.

“Seokmin,” he chokes out, “what just—”

“I _knew_ it,” says Seokmin, hiccuping through his tears. He reaches for Minghao’s hand and presses their shaking wrists together with a watery laugh. There’s no mistaking it: the Marks are the same. Minghao feels lightheaded. “Wait,” says Seokmin, reaching for Minghao’s other hand with wide eyes, “You—oh my god. _Mingyu-yah,_ ” he yells. “Come here, quickly!”

Minghao pulls his hand back like it’s burning and scrambles to his feet. Seokmin stands with him, his joyous expression barely faltering. Minghao shakes his head wordlessly and tries to back up but his calves hit the edge of the bathtub. He can’t do this. He wants to shrink away, dissolve, for taking something so precious from Mingyu when he doesn’t even believe in it. He can’t be—this can’t be—

“Guys it’s like five in the morning, what are you _doing?_ ” Mingyu’s voice reaches them before he does, but it’s enough.

Again, the fireworks. Again, the landmines between Minghao’s ribs. He grips the sink for balance and wills himself to stay present, but his vision swims and the hook in his mouth flings him backwards anyway.

Mingyu is seventeen but he holds himself like he’s immortal. He’s too loud and too tall and Minghao doesn’t like him. He blinks. Mingyu is fragile and small in the moonlight as he says, _I want to be your friend but you won’t let me,_ and Minghao holds his hand over the gap between their mattresses as Seokmin snores above them. The years flick past like an old film reel, and through it all, Mingyu gravitates to Minghao’s side like the ocean to the moon; Mingyu uses too many words and Minghao doesn’t use enough; Minghao lets him slip away because he thinks it’s the right thing to do, but Mingyu always comes back, because Minghao never truly lets go.

Minghao snaps back into his body like a slingshot and Mingyu is standing in front of him, eyes wet and laughing with his hands over his mouth like he’s trying to control it. Seokmin is at his side, as he always is, but right now he only has eyes for Minghao.

“It’s you,” says Mingyu. It sounds like coming home—like the life Minghao used to let himself dream about.

Seokmin takes Mingyu’s hand in his right and Minghao’s in his left and looks between them with a radiant smile. “All three of us,” he says triumphantly. “It feels so right. I mean, of course it does, it’s—we’re _connected_.” He seems to lose his breath and a few more tears track down his cheeks but he makes no move to wipe them away. His eyes settle on Minghao like a butterfly on a rose. “This is the best day of my life.”

It’s as though the universe has presented Minghao with a golden opportunity to let years’ worth of walls crumble down at his feet. He could tell them everything: all the words he swallowed down on the first day he fell in love and every time after that. Because it’s a growing thing, this falling in love—it could never happen just once, not with Mingyu, not with Seokmin, not when they mean more to Minghao than he might ever mean to himself. 

The realisation blazes through the shock and fear like wildfire and Minghao feels everything in total clarity, feels dizzy with the freedom, like he could fly, like he could finally love openly and honestly for the rest of his life.

But, as quickly as the fear disappears, it returns. 

He loves them, that hasn’t changed and it never will, but this isn’t what he really wants—not like this. He needs _them_ to choose _him_. Being held in their hands would mean nothing if their wrists were being puppeteered by red strings. 

It must show on his face because Mingyu’s smile pulls down at the corners and he says, “Myungho?” like he’s approaching a scared animal. Minghao tries to communicate everything he’s feeling through his eyes, but it feels like pushing an elephant through an archway.

“Ah, it’s intense, isn’t it?” says Seokmin, sounding excited. “Don’t worry, it only lasts a few days. I felt so dizzy the morning after Mingyu’s birthday. It was like that time we went to Jeju and I got really sunburnt and I had to sleep for two whole days. Remember?” 

Minghao’s breathing picks up. He pulls his hand out of Seokmin’s grip. “I can’t,” he whispers.

Seokmin frowns. “Really? It wasn’t that long ago.”

“No,” says Minghao, gesturing between their bodies. “This. I can’t.” 

“What do you mean?” Seokmin asks, laughing like it’s absurd, but Mingyu isn’t smiling anymore and Minghao feels like he’s going to throw up. He offers no explanation before pushing his way between their bodies and escaping to his bedroom. 

They follow him like ghosts, uncharacteristically quiet. When Minghao starts pulling on clothes over his pyjamas with shaking hands, Mingyu makes a wounded sound. 

“Are you going somewhere?” 

“Jeonghan-hyung’s,” Minghao says. Jeonghan will undoubtedly hate him for waking him up at this hour, but Minghao would rather be in his bad graces than spend another minute trying to contain the supernova in his chest with his bare hands. 

“I don’t understand,” Seokmin says meekly. He’s hovering behind Mingyu, small like a child despite the beautiful stretch of his shoulders, and Minghao hates disappointing them, but he has to.

“Talk to us,” Mingyu pleads. When he reaches out a hand, Minghao’s body sways towards it like a magnet and he has to use all his strength to fight it, breathing harshly as he straightens up.

“Not now,” he says, “I can’t…”

“Can’t what,” Mingyu whispers, voice cracking. He’s tearing up again. “Don’t leave. I know it’s scary but we’re right here. Please.” He moves to block the door with his body, reading Minghao’s move before he makes it. They’ve been here before. Minghao pulls the air into his lungs and holds it until it burns.

“Please move,” he says evenly. 

Mingyu shakes his head, stubborn. 

“Mingyu. Let me leave.” 

Minghao is holding his body like a dagger but the truth is, he’s seconds away from collapse. If Mingyu asks him to stay one more time, if Seokmin reaches out, if they swing once more at his defenses, he will give in. To all of it. He’ll stand down and let the universe do whatever it is that he’s been fighting so hard against his whole life.

But Mingyu steps aside, because Minghao asked him to, and Seokmin doesn’t reach for him when he moves past. 

He only notices the _HAPPY BIRTHDAY_ banner and the spread of decorations on the table when he’s already halfway out the door, and it takes all his strength not to turn around. 

*

Soonyoung pulls the door open with a grumpy pout that instantly clears into shock.

“Myungho, what—hey.” Minghao crashes into him like a crumbling building and Soonyoung’s arms wrap around his waist automatically. “Woah, what’s up? Are you okay? What are you doing here so early?”

Minghao just hugs him tighter and buries his face in his neck. 

“Is that Myungho?” Joshua comes into the living room, pulling a shirt on and looking wide awake despite the hour. He must have seen the text Minghao sent during the cab ride over. 

“I’m sorry,” Minghao says, “I know it’s early, I just couldn’t…”

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Joshua says. He isn’t usually one for physical affection but he crowds Minghao’s space instantly, stroking a hand soothingly over the nape of his neck and down to his shoulder blades. “You don’t have to explain yourself. It’s fine. Soonyoungie, get him some water? And tell Jeonghan to come out.”

“No,” Minghao whines, even though he’s desperate for Jeonghan to hold his hand and tell him that everything is going to be fine. 

Soonyoung pulls away and Joshua guides him over to the couch. “Do you want to take your coat off?” he asks.

Minghao nods—he’d forgotten he was wearing it. He’s still in his shoes. Such terrible manners. “I’m sorry,” he says weakly, starting to cry again. He feels like a child as Joshua shushes him and helps pull the huge coat from his shoulders. He’s never cried in front of Joshua before. He can’t bring himself to care.

“Where is he?” Jeonghan comes into Minghao’s view like an avenging angel, beautiful and fierce. “What happened?”

Minghao opens his mouth just as someone’s phone starts ringing. Soonyoung rushes to answer it. 

“Seokmin-ah?” He looks at Minghao in question and Minghao can only look back. “Yeah... he is. Don’t worry. Hyung is helping him. Okay. Yeah, alright. Bye.” He hangs up and carefully approaches Minghao. “That was Seokmin. He just wants to know that you’re okay.”

A sob wrenches its way out of Minghao’s chest and he slaps a palm over his mouth.

“Oh Myungho—” Jeonghan chokes. His eyes are fixed on Minghao’s wrist. Joshua goes eerily silent next to him and Soonyoung, ever himself in even the worst situations, shrieks. 

“Oh fuck,” he cries, “isn’t that—”

Jeonghan slaps him without looking. “Myungho, sweetheart, why is it so red?”

Minghao pulls into himself. “I tried to scrub them off,” he mumbles. Jeonghan makes a wounded noise. 

“ _Them_?” asks Joshua. 

Minghao holds his other wrist up and the room drowns in silence. He can see them making the connection. Jeonghan pays a lot of attention to small details that others usually miss, mostly to use them as leverage to get what he wants, so there’s no way he doesn’t immediately recognise the Marks. And Minghao would never ask them for help if he thought Mingyu and Seokmin weren’t an option first, and they all know that, so for him to be here, hiding from his home and his best friends with two Marks around his wrists, speaks volumes.

Jeonghan hums. “I’ve heard of this happening, people connecting more than once, but it’s so rare.”

“Ever heard of someone reversing it?” sniffs Minghao. Jeonghan’s eyes go soft with pity.

“Reverse it?” asks Soonyoung, aghast. “Why would anyone do that?”

“Because I don’t want this,” Minghao says slowly, like he’s explaining something to a child. 

“I don’t get it,” Soonyoung says, looking between all three of them. “It’s Seokmin and Mingyu, right? The pair you connected to?” Minghao nods reluctantly. “That’s _amazing_. Do you know how insane that is? Out of everyone in the world you could be Fated with, it just so happens to be two people you’re already in love with! And they love each other. _And_ you live with them. Is nobody else hearing how perfect this is?”

It does sound perfect, when it’s put like that, all neatly lined up like a ten year plan. Minghao would be selfish to accept it and selfish to walk away, but at least the illusion of a choice is better than none at all. 

He stands, gently moving Jeonghan aside and avoiding eye contact with Soonyoung. “Can I stay here for a little while?” he asks Joshua, because he never pushes when he knows Minghao is already at his limit.

Joshua nods. “Of course. You can sleep in my bed, I have class soon anyway.”

Right. The sun has already started rising. Minghao interrupted his friends’ sleep to just cry on their couch and then ignore them. He scrubs his palms down his face and starts off towards Joshua’s bedroom to wallow, but Jeonghan catches his arm.

“Myungho, just… please don’t let this eat away at you. It doesn’t have to be okay right away, but it also doesn’t have to be a bad thing.” He looks at Soonyoung over Minghao’s shoulder for a lingering second. “Trust me.”

“I do, hyung,” Minghao says, weary but honest.

“Good. And hey,” Jeonghan smiles. “Happy birthday.”

* * *

**JULY**

* * *

Minghao hates the heat. He hates not being able to layer his clothes without melting into them, and he hates people standing too close to him. He spent his entire shift holding an electric fan in front of his face and sighing mournfully whenever a customer walked through the door and he had to interact with them. Wonwoo says his attitude will negatively affect their sales but he was also playing on his Nintendo Switch under the counter from the time Minghao arrived until he clocked out. 

Minghao walks back to the apartment slowly, appreciating the evening breeze and the rich colours of the sunset streaking through the clouds. Summer might not be his favourite season, but moments like this make the sticky humidity and the frizzy hair tolerable. 

Things have been good, lately. After the painful readjustment period of the past few months, Minghao has finally settled into the careful acceptance that he no longer just lives with his best friends, but with a couple. The wound was painfully fresh all through Spring but it has since dulled to an absent throbbing, like a crick in his neck: unpleasant, but tolerable.

He stops by the convenience store at the corner to buy an iced coffee despite the hour and some kimbap to snack on before they all go out for barbeque later. 

The apartment is quiet when he comes back. He toes off his shoes and nudges them into a line beside Seokmin’s sandals. It’s not even a tell of whether he’s here or not. Nowadays the apartment is littered with his things like little reminders: his sunglasses next to the fruit bowl, a pair of his jeans drying next to Mingyu’s on the rack, an empty can of soda that neither Minghao nor Minghao can stand the taste of sitting on the kitchen table. It’s empty, and Minghao sighs and puts it in the recycling. 

Mingyu’s bedroom door is closed but the air conditioner is on which means they’re both here. Probably just taking a nap.

Minghao washes his hands and sits down at the table to eat his kimbap, scrolling through Instagram, one earphone in so as not to disturb the others. 

He’s half-finished his food and watching a timelapse of someone repainting their kitchen when he hears something fall and someone laughs. He pauses the video and looks over his shoulder, but Mingyu’s door is still shut. Maybe he fell out of bed. Wouldn’t be the first time. 

He hovers his thumb over the video to unpause it, but then he hears another noise and almost chokes on the food in his mouth.

He’s just gotten his breathing under control when another moan floats under the door, louder than the first, and unmistakably Seokmin. He exhales shakily. He wishes their walls weren’t so thin—wishes he didn’t feel so rooted to the spot at the knowledge that Mingyu and Seokmin were hooking up one room away from him. Didn’t they hear him come home? 

If he stands up now and goes to his bedroom, they might hear him, but it’s only been a minute and Minghao hasn’t heard anything too incriminating. It would be the most normal and considerate course of action.

He doesn’t move. 

He sits at the table with one earphone in and nothing playing while Seokmin sighs and moans and the air vibrates with their conversation, muffled just enough by the door that Minghao can’t hear what they’re saying. It’s almost worse, in a way, because he can still hear Mingyu talking while Seokmin gets noisier, like he’s egging him on, pushing him closer to the edge with a river of words spilled over Seokmin’s beautiful body, and Minghao has no choice but to imagine what he’s saying, what he’s doing with his hands and his mouth and his body. What it would be like to be in his place. To be where Seokmin is. To be next to them. To be anything to them at all.

It feels like an eternity has passed when they finally go quiet. Minghao’s coffee can is dented with how tightly he was holding it and he slumps back into the seat, embarrassed and horrifically turned on. 

He scrambles to look busy on his phone when the bedroom door starts opening, praying that his cheeks aren’t as red as they feel. 

Seokmin steps out. He’s in a t-shirt and boxers, and Minghao’s eyes immediately drop to his thighs. They’re absolutely covered in marks. Minghao bites the inside of his cheek to hold back the noise building in his throat.

Seokmin shrieks when he notices him. “Fuck, oh my god,” he says, holding a hand to his chest. “I didn’t know you were here.”

The door swings open again and Mingyu appears, shirtless but wearing sweatpants, like that makes any difference. His hair is a mess and his mouth is swollen and Minghao wants to melt into the floorboards. 

“Myungho! When did you get home?” Mingyu asks a bit frantically.

“Um.” Minghao hesitates. “Recently.”

Seokmin’s cheeks are flushing at a dangerous rate. “How recently?” he asks. 

Minghao pointedly drops his eyes to Seokmin’s thighs and raises an eyebrow, and Seokmin looks down at himself with a squeak, trying to tug the hem of his shirt low enough to cover the marks. Mingyu is visibly embarrassed, too, but he also looks proud. Minghao would be, too, if his mouth had just made an artwork of Seokmin’s inner thighs.

“I’ll make more noise next time I come home,” Minghao offers. 

“Sorry,” Mingyu says, grinning. 

Seokmin buries his face in Mingyu’s bare shoulder and screams. “I want to die,” he says weakly.

“It’s okay. Pretty sure you hit a new octave at one point. Seungkwan will be extremely jealous,” Minghao says, because it’s safer to joke about it than act like it affects him. Seokmin takes the bait and leans over the couch to throw a pillow at Minghao. He deflects it with a giggle and Mingyu leans against the doorframe with an easy grin. 

And just like that, the tension bursts, and it’s just another normal thing for Seokmin and Mingyu, and another thing to keep Minghao awake at three am.

* * *

**NOVEMBER**

* * *

After the fourth day in a row of being ignored, Mingyu knocks on Minghao’s bedroom door. 

“I know you’re in there,” he says. “Come on, I made breakfast.”

“I’m not hungry,” Minghao calls after a pause. 

“But you will be.” The door rattles lightly as Mingyu slides his back down it. “I can wait here all day. Got nothing to do.” 

Minghao groans into his pillow. He knew this was coming. They used to solve most of their big arguments like this, with a door between them like a treaty zone. It was better than texting because there was less room for misinterpretation, and it felt more physical than a phone call, but it guarded them against each other—the way Minghao would scowl when he disagreed and Mingyu would try to use his physical presence as a scare tactic. 

Minghao couldn’t explain why, but it makes it easier to be honest. 

They even made rules: the door can’t be locked, if you knock instead of answering it means you need more time, and whoever opens the door has to apologise first. Like all systems it has its flaws, and Minghao was once stuck in the bathroom for three hours because Mingyu refused to let go of the fact that he’d booked a month long trip to China without mentioning it until the day before he was set to leave. 

But it works, most of the time. 

Begrudgingly, Minghao gets out of bed and kneels down in front of his door, sitting on his heels. The floorboards announce his arrival. 

“Seokmin isn’t here,” Mingyu starts. “He’s having brunch with his cousin.”

“Okay.”

The silence settles again. Minghao waits. He doesn’t feel ready to have this conversation yet despite what he promised Jeonghan—doesn’t know when he really will—so Mingyu can do the heavy lifting for now. 

“I can feel it, you know? When you’re sad. It’s nothing obvious—I can’t like, read your mind or anything—but part of being Fated means having a connection. More than you’ll ever have with anyone else.”

Minghao’s tongue feels stuck to the roof of his mouth. The past week has been a blur of sensory overload and exhaustion, but he never once thought this was the reason. “So you can... feel what I feel? That doesn’t make sense.”

Mingyu laughs softly. “None of it does. Took Seokmin and I like a month to figure it all out.”

“Why didn’t you just ask Jeonghan or Soonyoungie hyung?”

“It’s different for everyone.”

Minghao scoffs. 

“So you still think it’s fake, then?” asks Mingyu, disbelieving. “It’s happening to you right now, Myungho, how can you not believe it?”

“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” Minghao bites. “All I know is that I feel exhausted and sick and I just want it to _stop_.“

Mingyu‘s next words are so quiet Minghao almost doesn’t catch them. 

“You don’t want this?”

Minghao presses his palm against the wood with a shaky exhale. “I don’t know what I want,” he says, which is a lie, but that’s another fault in the system. 

Mingyu is so quiet it’s almost as if he’s left, but Minghao can still see the edges of his shadow under the door. “Mingyu-yah?” 

A heavy pause. “Yeah?”

“It doesn’t hurt, does it?”

“What?”

“When you feel my... when I’m sad. In the connection.”

Mingyu sighs tightly, and Minghao knows him well enough to know it’s accompanied by hands pushing through his hair. “I don’t need to be Fated to you to feel bad when you’re upset.”

Minghao tips his forehead against the wood. 

“But no. It doesn’t hurt. It’s more of an awareness than anything. Like a sixth sense. Seokminnie calls it a superpower.” There’s fondness creeping into his voice. “He always tries to guess how I’m feeling before I tell him. Ninety percent success rate.”

“And the other ten percent?”

“Sometimes I’m just hungry.”

Minghao laughs, surprising himself, and Mingyu echoes it softly. They breathe together for a minute. Minghao wants Mingyu to open the door with a desperation that frightens him, but he knows that it’s on him, this time; Mingyu is good at pushing but he’s even better at knowing when to pull. And anyway, Minghao is the one who’s been ignoring them since his dramatic walk out on his birthday. 

He still hasn’t explained himself which he knows is dangerous, especially with how quickly Seokmin jumps to conclusions, but how is he supposed to explain any of this? Where would he even begin? It’s not about the Marks— they’re only one thing on the list that’s been unravelling at Minghao’s feet for the past four years. It would take the rest of his life to get through it, to tell Seokmin and Mingyu what they mean to him. And does he deserve to have that chance? The jasmine on his wrists and the boy on the other side of his door says _yes, it’s yours, you can take it,_ but the ghost of heartbreak and the logic he uses like a crutch says _be careful, it’s too good to be true._

“I can hear you thinking,” Mingyu says.

Minghao knocks once. “I thought you said it didn’t work like that.”

Mingyu knocks back. “Call it my ten percent.“ The smile is clear in his voice, but it fades into something more serious. “Hey um. I want you to know that we haven’t forgotten how much all this soulmate stuff bothers you. So we’re not trying to, I don’t know, disregard your feelings or make you feel bad on purpose. We were—are—just really excited and... well I can’t really speak for Seokmin... but you can tell me to back off if you want and I’ll try but it’ll be hard since we live together and—“ He exhales harshly. “I just. I miss you. We both do.”

Minghao presses his cheek against the door. He’s about to open it, but the front door opens instead. 

“Mingyu? What are you doing?” 

Seokmin’s voice reaches them like afternoon sunlight and Minghao instantly starts searching himself for any hint of emotion that isn’t his own like a man digging a grave with his bare hands, because he refuses to believe what Mingyu said until he feels it for himself. 

It’s surprisingly easy, and he gasps when he finds a flare of _concern_ paired with something like _distress_ and he can’t tell who is who but that’s—it’s them. He can _feel_ them. Holy shit. 

“You’re back soon,” Mingyu replies. There’s the sound of shoes coming off and keys hitting porcelain. 

“Yeah we just got coffee,” Seokmin says distractedly, voice coming closer. “Why are you—are you talking to Myungho?”

“Hi, Seokminnie,” Minghao says. The _concern_ blossoms bright pink and he holds a hand over his stomach like he might be able to feel Seokmin’s _hope_ with his fingers.

“Hey,” Seokmin says, soft, tentative. The floorboards welcome their next guest. “How are you? Have you eaten?”

“I made him breakfast but he doesn’t want to come out,” Mingyu pouts.

“I’m fine,” Minghao cuts in. “Thank you.”

“He’s lying,” says Mingyu. 

“He can hear you,” Minghao and Seokmin say at the same time. Seokmin giggles and Minghao melts into the sound. 

Silence quickly falls between the three of them like an unwanted party guest, where Seokmin is too polite to kick them out and Mingyu is too stubborn to even acknowledge them and Minghao never wanted to be at this party in the first place. It’s never been a problem before now—Minghao feels at a total loss of things to say, but in the end he doesn’t need to worry, because Seokmin steps up for all of them. 

“Are we okay?” he asks simply. 

“Yes,” says Minghao. Of that, he is certain. He will make it certain. 

“And,” Seokmin hesitates, “More importantly… are _you_ okay?”

Minghao lets his face crumple behind the safety of the door. He brings the knuckles of his index and middle finger up to the wood and knocks twice. 

His stomach flares with a singular wash of blue _sadness_ and, for the first time in months, it feels like the three of them are in true harmony.

* * *

**JUNE**

* * *

“It’s weird,” says Minghao, blinking slowly at the ceiling. 

“What?” asks Joshua.

“It doesn’t feel like anything has changed. With Mingyu and Seokmin.”

Joshua hums. He’s become accustomed to the way Minghao starts conversations in the middle, giving voice to a train of thought that nobody else is privy to. That, or he pretends to understand what he’s talking about until there’s enough context for him to piece everything together. As it is, Minghao has been sulking since he arrived for Wine Friday, and Joshua has valiantly ignored it until now. Minghao feels bad, but he can’t exactly bring this problem to Mingyu or Seokmin like he usually might.

“What does that mean, exactly?” Joshua asks.

“I don’t know. They’re not acting that differently.”

“Did you expect them to?” Joshua turns to lie on his side on the couch, looking down at Minghao where he’s lying on the rug, restless fingers tugging at the threads.

“Nothing about this was expected, hyung.”

“Answer the question.”

Minghao scowls at him but Joshua just smiles serenely and gestures for him to continue. When Minghao stays silent, he sighs. “Alright, let me rephrase: how are they acting?”

Minghao frowns. “Seokmin is at our apartment all the time and he holds hands with Mingyu whenever he’s close to him and they hug a lot.”

“Wow, that is the same,” Joshua says.

Minghao throws his hands up in frustration. “They haven’t even kissed yet.”

“Maybe not in front of you,” Joshua points out, and if he didn’t already know, the way Minghao goes quiet and completely still would surely be enough to give away his feelings. Joshua sighs gently. “Sorry. It must be really difficult. Do you want to talk about something else?”

No. “Yes.” Minghao peels himself off the rug. He can’t feel sorry for himself forever, no matter how tempting it is. “And it’s not difficult. It’s fine.”

“Myungho, it’s a huge change, you don’t have to be okay with it so soon.”

 _But what if I’m never okay with it_ , he thinks. What if he has to live with lead in his shoes for the rest of his life, or however long Mingyu and Seokmin decide to keep him around for? How long will it take for them to realise that they don’t need him, now that they have each other so completely and unconditionally? Why aren’t they already pushing him away? 

Joshua is still looking at him with wide eyes full of pity, and it makes Minghao itchy. Normally he’d pull away entirely but he’s had just enough wine to make him honest and curious about things he might otherwise dismiss.

“Hyung, how long did it take for you? To move on?” he asks quietly. There’s no delicate way to ask such a question, and Minghao flinches when Joshua’s eyes shutter, his mouth pulling into a taut line.

“It’s not the same,” he says.

“Sorry. Forget I asked.” Minghao stands up. 

“No—it’s fine.” Joshua flops back onto the couch and Minghao sits on the arm next to his feet, one hand coming down to absently rub at one of Joshua’s ankles. It takes a few minutes, but he doesn’t push. When Joshua finally speaks, his voice is quiet but steady. 

“It took longer than I thought it would, to be honest. But it was more the... the loss of a life I thought I was going to have, rather than the person I was going to spend it with, y’know?”

Minghao nods. He’ll never say it out loud because it’s an insensitive, ugly thought to have, but he feels closer to Joshua because of his severed soulmate connection. He never found out what happened, exactly, and he’ll likely never ask. 

Conversations like this don’t usually affect Minghao because he holds himself at a careful arm’s distance from anything to do with fate or soulmates, but when he looks down at Joshua—body tense with a grief he might never admit to out loud—it hurts, because it feels like looking into a mirror.

“It’s completely different though, Myungho,” Joshua says after a long silence. “You know that.”

“Sure,” Minghao says, and it sounds unconvincing even to his own ears. 

Joshua sighs but he smiles honestly when their eyes meet, and Minghao thinks, not for the first time, that his friends are far too forgiving.

* * *

**NOVEMBER**

* * *

Over time, Minghao has learned how to push tension out of his body instead of holding it. He knows how to turn frustration into a base coat and smudges of pigment on his fingers and wrists and the denim of his jeans; into aching muscles and knife-sharp choreography. It’s a solid method, but it doesn’t always work. This month has been difficult to the point where he feels paralysed and he hasn’t been able to use his body to forget the problem because his body _is_ the problem. 

There’s no escaping what is happening, and it’s taken almost two weeks, but Minghao thinks he might finally be ready to talk about it.

He took the first step last week: the day after their mediated conversation , he opened his bedroom door and left it open all afternoon while he read. Mingyu came home from class and poked his head in with a hopeful expression, and when they met eyes Minghao recognised the sudden colour of Mingyu’s _happiness_ so intimately that it made him gasp.

Mingyu’s smile tilted devastatingly. “Ah,” he said, “that’s better.” Then he disappeared into his own bedroom and Minghao had to concentrate so hard on not following him that he read the same page four times.

They ate dinner together two days after that. It might have been awkward if Mingyu didn’t fill the silence so well with what seemed like every thought he’d had in the past ten days. He couldn’t sit still and he dropped his chopsticks twice and almost spilled water all over the table. 

Seokmin came over with dessert and when Minghao smiled at him in thanks, his eyes welled up with tears. “I have allergies,” he said hurriedly.

“It’s November,” Mingyu pointed out through a mouthful of ice cream. Minghao smiled at the table and Seokmin sniffed loudly. Minghao felt him _aching_ for something and he looked up, concerned. 

“Are you okay?” 

Seokmin jolted with surprise. “Oh um, yeah! I’m fine!” He laughed. “Wow I forgot you could feel it too. No more hiding, huh?”

Predictably—pathetically—the spoken acknowledgement of what was already visible around their wrists made Minghao retreat into himself.

Seokmin’s face fell. “Ah, sorry,” he said quietly.

(Despite how obviously they ache to talk about it, to understand how Minghao feels and where he stands, they never push him. Not once. They simply take what he gives them with grateful hands and sun-bright smiles and Minghao feels so guilty and mean for not being able to give them more, for loving them in a way they probably don’t want but are stuck with anyway.)

The next day at breakfast, Minghao spent a good ten minutes working up the courage to hook his free pinky with Seokmin’s where it rested on the table. The accompanying feedback loop of emotion felt like a static shock. Seokmin choked on his coffee, spluttering and coughing into his mug and the headache that had been plaguing Minghao since his birthday disappeared like a bursting balloon and he sat back against his chair like he’d been pushed.

Mingyu stood watching, frozen, beside the sink. He took a long second before speaking. “It’s um. Sometimes skin to skin contact heightens the feeling thing,” he explained.

“Oh,” Minghao said, too overwhelmed to maintain his sense of detachment. He pulled his hand back into his lap and Seokmin’s hand flexed against the table before he did the same.

Minghao hadn’t known what to do with the idea that touching Mingyu or Seokmin would no longer be an easy, casual thing but rather an open door into his mind, a hammer to the walls around his heart. He murmured a weak excuse and retreated to his bedroom.

Three days later, and he’s still thinking about it. 

It’s been keeping him awake until the early hours of the morning and he can’t tell if the thrum under his skin is excitement or fear. He learned to control his facial expressions from a young age so that other people would see only what he wanted them to, but he never knew how much he relied on it until now, when it’s no longer an option. 

Now, the two people he’s hidden the most from are the same people who have him stripped bare in every way except the one he wants.

Now, every time he sees Mingyu in the morning, he has to hold himself back from stroking the nape of his neck or touching his elbow as he passes because Minghao doesn’t want him seeing all the ways he’s imagined himself under and around and on top of his body. 

Now, when Seokmin leans in to press their foreheads together in a moment of joy, Minghao side-steps him like a landmine, because he can’t risk Seokmin seeing how desperately he wants to kiss him.

Mingyu said it didn’t work like that, but if Minghao can control how much it happens (if at all), then he will. It’s bad enough that Mingyu smirks at him now when he walks past in nothing but a towel because he can feel a flash of the heat that flares in Minghao’s stomach at the sight. 

Minghao hasn’t initiated anything since that dinner because he doesn’t feel brave enough to test the limits of this precarious thing just yet.

Mingyu, however.

*

Their kitchen table said it seats six on the box but four is probably a more realistic number: Mingyu is built like a tree and Seokmin always stretches his legs out like vines looking for sunlight, leaving Minghao crowded against his side, one leg crossed neatly over the other. 

Minghao isn’t bothered by their ankles brushing and their knees bumping underneath the table because he’s used to it. It happens every time he goes to a cafe, restaurant or movie theatre with them; when Mingyu pushes the arm back so he can crowd Minghao’s space; when Seokmin scoots over on the bench at barbeque to read the menu with his chin resting on Minghao’s shoulder. The three of them bid adieu to the concept of personal space a long time ago. 

But that was before Minghao’s birthday. 

He can tell they’re holding back. More than once, Seokmin has reached out for a hug only to pull his hands back like they’ve hit an invisible wall, brow pinching together and smoothing out in the same second. Mingyu hasn’t walked in on Minghao in the bathroom once—hasn’t even knocked to ask. Minghao doesn’t know if he feels grateful or upset. They’re only following his lead.

Or, they were. 

Dinner is a new green curry Seokmin found online and wanted to try. Dinner is more comfortable than it has been in weeks. Dinner is finished, and Mingyu keeps shooting Minghao looks over their empty plates.

Seokmin is three twists into a story about his day with Seungkwan when Mingyu’s foot brushes up against Minghao’s ankle. The first time it happened felt like an accident, the second time lingered, and this time it feels full of purpose: the ball of his foot drags slowly over Minghao’s ankle bone and catches the hem of his slacks. Minghao doesn’t move his foot because he doesn’t want Mingyu to know that it’s affecting him. He keeps his eyes on Seokmin, listening intently. 

Mingyu’s foot moves high enough to press above the line of Minghao’s sock and heat instantly flares from the point of contact, rushing up to Minghao’s head like someone just hit the bullseye at a carnival game. He can’t help the way his breath catches, the way his eyes flick over to Mingyu. 

One of Mingyu’s eyebrows jumps up when their eyes meet and he looks away before Minghao can, an infuriating smirk on his lips. 

Minghao knows he’s being played with. He can feel it in the way their moods are shifting: the calm blue of dinner conversation giving way to a deep purple intention, all swirling and heady. He could lean into it, beat them at their own game, but he doesn’t know the rules. He’s still petrified of overstepping because he still feels like an intruder in their relationship, and he doesn’t appreciate feeling pushed.

“I’m going to wash up,” he says, cutting Seokmin off. “Pass me your plates.”

“Oh, we’ll help,” Seokmin says easily, standing too. 

“No it’s fine.” 

“We insist!” Mingyu says, whisking the bowls out of Minghao’s hands. Seokmin frantically collects all the glasses before Minghao can and they both scramble to the kitchen like it’s a race. Minghao follows them, suspicious. They’re whispering frantically over the sound of the tap running and when Minghao rounds the corner with the last of the dishes they spring apart.

“Thanks, Myungho,” Seokmin says brightly. Their fingers brush as he takes the plates and Minghao’s hand spasms. If it weren’t for Seokmin holding on, the ceramic would be a shattered mess on the tiles.

“Sure,” Minghao breathes, a little dazed. 

“Alright. Washing, drying, putting away, let’s go,” Mingyu says. They all hold a hand out. One, two, three; Seokmin’s paper beats both of their rocks and he cries out happily; Minghao’s scissors trump Mingyu’s paper and he grabs the dishcloth with a flourish.

Mingyu pouts, pulling the gloves on. “I always get washing. This is rigged.”

“You’re just predictable,” Seokmin teases. 

Minghao’s role puts him in the middle and he can’t help but think it’s a set up, too. The kitchen is barely big enough for two people to move past each other comfortably, let alone three of them standing shoulder to shoulder. Their arms and fingers keep brushing each other despite Minghao’s efforts to keep the contact to a minimum. The air feels constricted. Every time Seokmin moves behind him to put something away, he settles a hand on Minghao’s waist, his hip. Mingyu’s hair falls in his eyes and he nudges Minghao, says, “Hey, can you?” and Minghao pushes shaking fingers through his fringe, careful not to touch his face. He feels drunk on their proximity. He focuses on not dropping the plates as he wipes them dry. 

When everything is clean and the last of the plates have been stacked in the cupboards, they fall quiet. Minghao grips the counter and closes his eyes, breathing through the feelings of _nervous_ and _happy_ and _need_ tossing him about like a rowboat in a stormy sea.

“Myungho,” Mingyu says, quietly.

Minghao opens his eyes, but keeps them trained down. Mingyu leans his hip against the counter and one of his hands moves carefully along the countertop towards Minghao’s. He keeps a steady inch of space between them as he hovers his hand over Minghao’s forearm. The anticipation of touch feels like a wave cresting in Minghao’s belly. Mingyu’s hand travels up to his elbow and back down to his wrist, where he pauses for one second, two, before slowly closing the distance and wrapping his hand around the Mark one finger at a time like a flower blossoming in reverse. Then, he _grips._

Minghao whimpers, chin dropping to his chest, and Mingyu’s forehead presses into his shoulder. His breathing is laboured. Seokmin moves close enough that the tip of his nose presses against the top of Minghao’s spine, breaths spilling down the neck of Minghao’s shirt. 

“What are you doing?” Minghao whispers, anguished. 

“Myungho…” Seokmin exhales. Minghao can feel the _want_ pulsing through his veins like a baseline, and maybe some of it is coming from them, maybe it’s not just his own desperation causing Mingyu to gasp against the sleeve of his shirt, but he’s too overwhelmed to be certain. He hates not knowing what he’s feeling—hates it even more when people try to figure it out for him.

“Please let go of me,” he says. 

They pull away instantly and Minghao takes a desperate lungful of air before turning to face them. They look as terrified as he feels. “You two have had _months_ to get used to all this and I've had what, two weeks? I still have _no_ idea what is happening and this is not how I want to figure it out.” Mingyu opens his mouth but Minghao cuts him off. “This was probably your idea, wasn’t it?” 

“Actually it was mine,” says Seokmin. Minghao blinks in surprise. “We’ve been giving you space, waiting for you to come to us, but you’re not doing it. And guess what, we don’t know what’s happening either, Myungho! We’re as lost and scared as you are!” Mingyu puts his hand on the nape of Seokmin’s neck and all the fight leaves his body. “I just thought—I don’t know what I thought. Pushing you never solves anything but we didn’t know what else to do.” His chest heaves. “God, I love you, but you’re impossible to talk to.” 

Minghao scoffs and looks away, jaw set. 

“You are,” Seokmin insists. 

“It’s not that…” 

Mingyu takes a step towards him. “Myungho.” His eyes search Minghao’s face, strips it bare. He tips Minghao’s chin up with a light touch. “You know we love you, right?”

Minghao hesitates. “Of course I do.”

Mingyu almost looks angry. “We love you,” he says, so fiercely it feels like an open flame.

“It’s not the same,” Minghao whispers brokenly, finally looking him in the eye.

Seokmin cuts in. “Because of the connection? That doesn’t change—”

“I’m not talking about that, I’m talking about—” Minghao pushes away from Mingyu again to breathe with his palms against the counter. The train is thundering towards him at breakneck speed and he can’t hear anything above the noise of it, the screaming inevitability of this moment, the _what if_ twisting into _why not,_ twisting his body back around, pushing it forward, pushing him over the line with no way of turning back and here it is, here it goes—

“I love you,” he chokes out. “I’m _in love_ with both of you. I was never going to tell you but then this happened and now you’re—you’re both stuck with me and I want to hate it so badly, but I don’t.” Minghao realises it as he says it, and it’s like a ten tonne weight has been lifted off his chest. He spreads his hands out and laughs in disbelief. “Oh my god, I don’t! I know it’s selfish but I’ve been dreaming about you wanting me back for years, and now it’s happening, but it’s not because you actually want me it’s just all this—” He holds out his wrists “—making you think that you do.”

Tears are streaming down Seokmin's face, his mouth hanging open in shock. Mingyu looks at Minghao’s Marks and then back at his face. He presses his hand to his forehead and laughs like it’s been shocked out of his body. “You don’t know,” he breathes. “Myungho. You _idiot_.”

Minghao blanches. “Hey—”

“No, I’m sorry, I love you, it’s just—did you never look up the facts? Not once?”

“What do you mean?!” Minghao pleads, dizzy. Seokmin’s expression clears and he gasps loudly like he gets it too, hands coming up to his head. 

“Soulmate connections aren’t some, some magic fix,” Mingyu explains hurriedly, stuttering a little like he does when he has too much to say and doesn’t know where to start. He flutters closer to Minghao like a hummingbird. “Myungho, there are people who have to work for years to even _like_ the person they’re Fated with.”

Minghao’s stomach drops. “What do you mean,” he repeats, sensing the meaning behind Mingyu’s words but not daring to believe them.

Seokmin comes closer. “It means we love you because we want to. We’re not under some spell.” He reaches out and Minghao lets him take his hand and press it to his chest, to feel his beating heart. He’s smiling like he was on the morning of Minghao’s birthday, like sunshine bursting through a stormcloud. “It’s _real_ , Myungho.”

Minghao looks between them wordlessly. Surely it can’t be that simple. 

Mingyu steps forward and strokes Minghao’s cheekbone with his thumb, palm settling on his jaw. “You’re so smart, but you can be really dumb sometimes,” he says fondly, tears in his eyes.

“That’s my line,” Minghao breathes, and surges forward.

Despite all his years of imagining this moment, Minghao is still caught off guard by the feeling of Mingyu’s mouth pressed against his. A few things line up: Mingyu instantly lets Minghao take the lead, he keeps a hand pressed against Minghao’s neck, fingers threading back into his hair, and when Minghao grabs his waist he makes a happy sound and crowds closer. What Minghao didn’t anticipate: every point of contact between their skin feels like liquid heat and when he flexes his fingers, digs in a little, a flare of _want_ pulses in his stomach that doesn’t belong to him. He gasps and their mouths separate loudly. Mingyu is breathing like he just ran a marathon, hot breath fanning over Minghao’s mouth, and Minghao almost leans back in, but he reaches out for Seokmin instead.

Seokmin obediently moves to stand beside them, interlacing his fingers with Minghao’s and pressing their palms together. They don’t say anything. They’ve moved past the need for words and Minghao has always spoken better with his body, anyway. 

The way they fold into each other is slower; Seokmin holds back for longer than Mingyu did, shining eyes darting back and forth between Minghao’s, searching. Minghao lets him look. He shows everything he’s feeling on his face because he has no more reasons left to hide. 

Seokmin finally leans in and Minghao exhales into a smile when he rubs their noses together instead of kissing him right away. Seokmin smiles too but he keeps his eyes closed as he slowly drags his nose along Minghao’s cheek, up to the sloping bridge of his nose. His bottom lip catches Minghao’s top lip on the way down. Minghao opens his mouth in askance, and after four years of waiting and one last steadying breath, Seokmin kisses him.

Minghao’s hand immediately moves to grab the front of Seokmin’s shirt. He feels entirely undone. He opens his mouth to deepen the kiss and Seokmin makes a devastating noise in response. The connection is flaring like exposed power lines in a thunderstorm and Minghao leans into it. He stops fighting it. What excuses does he have left? If this is what having no control feels like then he can’t imagine ever going back. Mingyu moves to press up against his back and he mourns every second they could have been doing this since his birthday. Mingyu was right, he _is_ an idiot, but he still needed the time to figure this out, to understand what he wanted, to lose sleep and overthink himself into exhaustion again and again until he finally realised what mattered the most. Nobody could have brought him to this point if he himself didn’t want to be here. And he does. He finally does. Marks and all. Whatever it takes to feel like this for the rest of his life—he accepts.

Seokmin pulls back to catch his breath and Mingyu hooks his chin over Minghao’s shoulder. Minghao can feel him smiling. He lets go of Seokmin’s shirt and reaches back to hold Mingyu’s head as he turns to kiss his mouth once more, open and hot. 

The moment they separate, Seokmin leans forward to kiss Mingyu over Minghao’s shoulder—a fierce, closed-mouth kind of kiss that makes Seokmin’s eyebrows bend to meet each other. 

Minghao feels their _love_ and _desperation_ like fireflies between his ribs. 

They alternate kissing like that for a few minutes, until the bubbles in the sink are all gone and Minghao’s mouth is starting to become sensitive from all the attention. He couldn’t stop smiling if he tried.

“So. How do you feel?” Seokmin asks, playing with Minghao’s fingers. Mingyu has both arms wrapped around his waist and they’ve started swaying back and forth like they’re dancing.

Minghao leans his temple against Mingyu’s cheek. He feels bold. Safe. “Why don’t you tell me?” he says.

Seokmin grins and brings their joined hands up to his cheeks. “Mingyu is better at this than I am,” he prefaces, “but let’s see. Happy?” Minghao nods. Seokmin’s brow creases in concentration. “Um. Warm… like… you just woke up? Are you tired?” 

“Not exactly,” Minghao says, laughing gently. 

“Damn,” Seokmin says. 

“Let me try,” Mingyu says. His hands move under the fabric of Minghao’s shirt and Minghao’s stomach muscles twitch in response. “Alright, well, definitely happy,” he says, right into Minghao’s ear, teasing and deep. “Relaxed. Much more at ease than you were an hour ago. And maybe…” He pulls Minghao’s earlobe into his mouth and groans softly at the flare it causes between them, gasp ringing in Minghao’s ear. 

“Oh, I felt that one too,” Seokmin says, a bit breathless.

“And?” Mingyu prompts. 

Seokmin’s cheeks are flushed red but he looks Minghao in the eye when he says: “You want us.”

“I think I need to lie down,” Minghao says weakly. 

“Oh baby, if you wanted to move this to the bedroom all you had to do was ask,” Mingyu says dramatically, and suddenly the ceiling is tilting. Minghao shrieks but Mingyu catches him easily, one arm scooped beneath his knees and the other under his back. “Hello,” he says cheerfully, walking them out of the tiny kitchen.

“Put me down,” Minghao cries. His head narrowly misses a door frame. “Mingyu!”

“He does this sometimes,” Seokmin says, trailing behind them. “Better to just let it happen.”

“He secretly loves it,” Mingyu stage-whispers. 

“It’s true,” Seokmin sighs. 

Mingyu starts heading to his bedroom, but Minghao shakes his head. Mingyu’s face falls. “My room,” says Minghao, and his eyes light up again, even brighter than before.

“You’re killing me,” he says.

“No dying,” Seokmin chastises, “and walk faster!”

“You heard the man,” Minghao says. His teasing earns him a less than graceful release and he bounces a little on the mattress where Mingyu dropped him. He can’t help but giggle. His whole body feels like it’s made of light. Mingyu wastes no time reaching behind his neck and pulling his t-shirt over his head. His arms flex as he flicks the material out and lays it over the armchair in the corner.

“Before you ask,” says Seokmin, turning on the lamp and crawling over to Minghao, “yes, he has folded up his clothes and put them away during sex. Multiple times.”

Mingyu whines. “Only because I might lose them if I don’t. Your bedroom is a nightmare!” He walks over to them on his knees and Minghao lets his eyes roam openly over his bare chest.

“Ah, he’s not wrong,” Seokmin concedes. 

Minghao starts to sit up, reaching for Mingyu’s hips, but two pairs of hands push him back onto the mattress and he yelps.

“Nope!” Mingyu says cheerfully. “We’ve talked about this.”

“No we haven’t,” Minghao says, trying to sit up again only to be pushed back with Mingyu’s hand against his sternum. It causes a sharp flash of heat in his gut and Mingyu’s eyelids flutter closed. When he opens them again, they’re dark and arresting, pinning Minghao in place like a third hand.

“Tell us if you don’t like anything,” Seokmin breathes into his ear, fingers snaking under his shirt, and Minghao barely has a moment to nod before Mingyu is leaning down to kiss him into the pillow. The hand on his sternum moves to his throat and Minghao whines, pressing up into it desperately. Mingyu meets him with just as much enthusiasm. He adjusts himself so he’s lying all along Minghao’s right side and one of his thighs press heavily between Minghao’s legs, pulling another broken sound from his chest. 

“Shit,” Mingyu breathes, smearing his mouth down Minghao’s chin and along the angle of his jaw. He starts licking the shell of his ear and Minghao’s toes curl at the feeling. He’s completely overwhelmed and this time, he loves it. When Seokmin props himself up on an elbow and leans over to catch Minghao’s mouth with his own, Minghao smiles into it. He tries to bring his hand up to Seokmin’s cheek, but it’s trapped under Seokmin’s body.

“Seokmin-ah,” he laughs, warped by the kiss. “My arm.”

“Sorry!” Seokmin sits up to let Minghao reposition. Mingyu suddenly starts using his teeth and Minghao’s back arches. “God, you’re so beautiful,” breathes Seokmin. Mingyu whines in agreement and his hand moves to Minghao’s lower back, pushing their bodies together frantically, surging up the bed, thigh pressing down. He groans when he feels Minghao hard against him and Minghao can only gasp and cling to Mingyu’s bicep as they move together. Seokmin lets it happen for a few seconds, but then he leans over and slaps Mingyu on the ass, hard. 

“Fuck!” Mingyu gasps, jolting forward. 

“Stick to the plan, you animal,” Seokmin scolds, and incredibly, Mingyu stops. 

“What?” Minghao says, dazed. 

“ _Myungho is priority number one_ ,” Mingyu recites, breathless. He groans into Minghao’s neck, long and suffering, and pulls back. 

“Good boy,” Seokmin says, leaning over Minghao to kiss Mingyu’s bottom lip. They both seem to realise at the same time that they haven’t kissed each other since the kitchen and it gets messy, quickly. Minghao couldn’t really see them earlier so he couldn’t see the way Mingyu arches into Seokmin, makes himself small enough to fit in his embrace—the way Seokmin gets a hand on Mingyu’s ass and immediately digs his fingers in. The noises they make. God, the _noises they make_. For once, not muffled by the walls. Mingyu’s hands are huge on the side of Seokmin’s neck and he presses a thumb to Seokmin’s chin to coax it open so he can lick into his mouth. Minghao goes breathless at the sight.

“Wait,” Seokmin says, “Myungho—”

“Don’t stop on my account,” Minghao says, folding his hands behind his head.

“But you’re— _ah, shit_ —priority number one.”

Minghao laughs. “What does that even mean?”

Mingyu kisses down Seokmin’s chin to his Adam’s apple before he sits back. He pushes his hair out of his face and Minghao almost drools at the rippling flex of his muscles. Mingyu shoots him a sharp grin. “We talked about this. How we imagined it happening.”

Minghao freezes. “You did? When?”

Mingyu and Seokmin share a look. “Um,” Seokmin’s voice jumps up an octave. “A while ago?”

Minghao sits up. His mouth has gone dry. “When?” he urges. 

“Well… officially… this week,” Seokmin says. “That’s when we made The Plan, but…” He looks pleadingly at Mingyu.

Mingyu looks at the ceiling and makes a loud, strangled noise. “We talked about it the first time we had sex.”

Minghao chokes. He scrambles to stand. “What the fuck?” he shouts, pacing back and forth at the end of the bed. “We weren’t even—that was—what?!”

“I _told_ you he’d freak out,” Mingyu tells Seokmin, rolling his eyes. “We’re sorry if it’s weird, but it was confusing and intense and I like, missed you, and Seokmin had his mouth on my dick and I just sort of started crying and he freaked out because he thought he’d hurt me but it was just because I wanted you to be there, too, and I felt so bad for thinking it but then _he_ started crying because he missed you too and it was… yeah.”

“I did use my teeth by accident, though,” Seokmin adds quietly.

“Hard not to,” Mingyu says. “Look at those things!”

Minghao looks back and forth between them. They’re sitting on the bed like scolded children who just got caught stealing instead of admitting to Minghao that they’ve reciprocated his feelings for months. Minghao is at a total loss for words, so he just laughs _._ It bursts out of him like light. He laughs at the absurdity of it, the chaos and the beauty of wanting them in an anguished silence that felt like it would break him, when really it was a stepping stone to this very moment. 

The others are looking at him with matching smiles, no doubt feeling his joy, and their eyes follow him as he moves to sit on the bed between them. 

Minghao’s heart is bright red and bleeding on a platter. It’s never been his to keep. It’s always been a simple question of timing. Silently, purposefully, he reaches for their hands. They each offer him their Marked wrists without asking and Minghao looks at them, all lined up, and he smiles.

“Seokmin-ah?” he asks.

Seokmin sniffs. “Yeah?”

“Tell me how I’m feeling.” 

Seokmin laughs wetly. “I don’t think I can put it into words.” His other hand finds Mingyu’s and he holds on tight, eyes passing back and forth between them. “But if I spend every day of the rest of our life together trying, I’m sure I’ll get it right eventually.”

Minghao feels the words like a bullet to the chest and Mingyu hiccups, “Fuck,” and begins to cry in earnest, harder than Minghao has ever seen. They both crowd him into the mattress and pepper his face with kisses and love confessions until he stops. 

It’s not the way Minghao imagined it happening, but it’s perfect.

Perhaps the universe has a sense of humour after all.

* * *

**JANUARY**

* * *

**“** Have you ever thought about it?” asks Mingyu.

Minghao hums. “Thought about what?” 

“C’mon,” Mingyu nudges his shoulder, “Humour me. Imagine you don’t hate the idea of a soulmate as much as you do now, and tell me what you imagine it might be like.”

Minghao looks up from his phone to give Mingyu an empty look.

Mingyu rolls his eyes. “Fine. I’ll go first.” Seokmin turns the volume down on the movie and crosses his legs, looking at Mingyu with wide eyes. Minghao sighs and puts his phone away. 

“Ah, I’m sort of nervous now,” Mingyu giggles. He takes a calming breath. “Okay so, whenever I think about it, I imagine us sitting in a kitchen. I’m cooking for them and we’re just talking. We live in a house I helped build and you can see the ocean from the second floor.”

“A house? You can’t even build a bookshelf,” Seokmin says.

“It’s a fantasy!” Mingyu pouts.

Seokmin bows his head. “Right, sorry. Go on.”

“Uh, that’s it,” Mingyu says lamely. “I know it’s kind of stupid.”

Minghao puts a hand on his knee. “That doesn’t sound stupid at all,” he says softly.

Mingyu brightens. “Really?” Minghao nods. He thinks he could easily live by the ocean. He’d paint with the windows open. Mingyu’s skin would constantly be sunkissed and Seokmin’s nose would be dusted in freckles in the summer. They could fall asleep to the sound of waves and wake up to each other. 

“Yeah. It sounds nice,” he says. _If you take the soulmate out of the equation_.

Seokmin hums. “Is it weird to say I haven’t imagined it yet?”

“Yes,” says Mingyu.

“Okay I _have_ , but I mean… I can’t see what it’ll look like without the person, y’know? So many of the best parts will be because of them and what they love.” His voice shrinks as he goes, until it’s almost too soft to hear. “That would make me happy.”

“You’re such a sap,” Mingyu says, tossing a pillow at him.

“You brought it up!”

“Whatever. I just wanted to hear Myungho’s.”

They both look at him expectantly and he shrugs. “You know how I feel about it.”

“Alright, party pooper, just pretend it’s someone you’re dating,” Mingyu says. “I know you’ve thought about it.”

Would it be too much to simply parrot back their own words at them? _I want what you want._ It’s the most complete truth, but it’s the last thing he’d ever say. 

Minghao tips his head back against the couch. “Something happy,” he says. “Something unpredictable yet… stable. The fruit bowl is always too full and the peaches always go bad, but we never learn our lesson. We make time for each other even when it’s hard, and if we argue then it’s only because we need to and not because we want to. It’s just… good.” 

He can see it so clearly. Maybe because he’s not imagining so much as he’s describing what’s already in front of him. 

Mingyu grins and nudges him again. “Yah, was that so hard?”

“That sounds really nice, Myungho,” Seokmin says. “I hope you find that with someone.”

“Yeah,” Minghao says quietly. “Me too.”

* * *

**DECEMBER**

* * *

Someone’s alarm goes off and Minghao, the lightest sleeper, wakes up immediately. With some difficulty, he extracts himself from Mingyu’s arms, guiding his sleepy, searching hands over to Seokmin where he’s lying on his stomach on the opposite side of the bed. Mingyu flops over with a happy sound and ends up almost covering Seokmin’s body with his own. Minghao double checks that Seokmin is still breathing and then he quietly pads to the kitchen to make breakfast. 

Minghao measures out the coffee, lines up the mugs and turns the television on low volume to allow the morning news to drift through the apartment. It’s going to snow tonight. Minghao writes it on a sticky note and presses it to the wall beside the coat rack because Mingyu is working late.

The smell of coffee starts to wake Minghao up a little more. He scrolls through his Instagram feed and comments a heart on Seungkwan’s most recent post. It’s quiet. Easy. Outwardly, not much has changed in their lives. Their friends threw them a party when they found out, and Soonyoung bought gender reveal party poppers, except he crossed out ‘It’s a boy!’ on the flag that popped out and replaced it with ‘It’s not gay if it’s a three way!’. Seokmin took one of them home. It’s hanging on the back of the bathroom door.

What they have together has always been steady and loving, but now that it’s been given space to grow, it’s blooming like a flower in the sun. What they have now is:

Minghao waking up to Mingyu’s smiling eyes tracing the edges of his face and Seokmin’s nose pressing into the space between his shoulder blades.

Seokmin signing his name on the lease and being presented with a key in a velvet box like it hasn’t already been on his keychain for a year.

Minghao enjoys the curve of Seokmin’s smile, so he kisses it; Mingyu walks past him with no shirt on and he lets his palms drag against his beautiful, golden skin, and Mingyu uses his lips to map out a passage along Minghao’s collarbones; when Seokmin reaches out for Mingyu first, Minghao follows close behind, but only if he needs to. It’s not a jealous thing. Not anymore.

For so long he was convinced he would drown in this ocean only for the waves to gently carry him to shore like that was the plan all along. 

And oh, he never believed in fate, it’s true, but love like this feels bigger than the three of them. It feels like a lesson, to want and be wanted in return, and it’s one he is learning to accept one day at a time. He is opening, spreading outwards like the heat of summer even as frost spins spiderwebs on their bedroom window. 

Everyday he wakes up beside two boys who love him back, and everyday they find a new way to convince him how real it is to be, being that he is alive and he is loved—that the Marks on their wrists are a result of their love rather than the reason for it. 

This, he believes in.

And it is more than enough.

* * *

**THE END**

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to the friends who encouraged me and sorry to Minghao for all that I put you through


End file.
